


Apotheosis

by dracusfyre



Series: Tony Stark Bingo Challenge [34]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Bucky Barnes, BAMF Loki (Marvel), BAMF Tony Stark, Brainwashing, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Bucky Barnes's Trigger Words, Found Family, God!Tony, Infinity Gems, Loki & Tony Stark Friendship, M/M, Magic and Science, POV Alternating, Pre-Slash, Protective Bucky Barnes, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-02-16 04:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18684448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracusfyre/pseuds/dracusfyre
Summary: Tony could sense the self-satisfied murmur of computer from across the room and the inquisitive trilling of the cameras in front of him. Which, he knew on an intellectual level, should feel strange. It should be weird that he can hear electronics talking to themselves and taste electricity like mint on his tongue, but it didn’tfeelweird. At this point he was just rolling with it and saving the freakout for later; he also wasn’t discounting the possibility that he was, in fact, losing his mind.Tony Stark comes out of Afghanistan with powers he doesn't understand and the determination to make the most of the second chance he'd been given. Even though he saves the world (a lot), the most important thing he does may be when he gives others that same second chance.





	1. In the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> I am truly grateful to have had to opportunity to collaborate with the awesome [Serinah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serinah/pseuds/Serinah) for the 2019 Iron Man Big Bang! Working with her was fantastic and the artwork she created for my story is breathtaking. Go give her love on her beautiful artwork [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19042888)!

In one of those funny coincidences of timing that turned out to not actually be a coincidence, Anthony Edward Stark was born when the technician working on the first microprocessor put down his soldering iron, sat back in his chair and said, “I’m finished. Whatcha think?”

He was in a cleanroom that made a surgical room look filthy; sterilized white walls, plastic booties over his shoes, pale blue scrubs over his clothes with a cap over his hair and a white mask that ensured that every technician looked like the last. His coworker, occupied in his own project, barely looked over before saying, with a hint of dry sarcasm, “Looks like it’s going to change the world, Bob.”

Not very far away, in an actual surgical room that was the best money could buy, Howard Stark was presented with his firstborn son and heir. Since his only previous experience with children was filtered through nearby Hollywood, Howard was nonplussed to discover how little a human infant could do in the first months of its life. So even though little Tony was walking and talking by his first birthday, knew the letters of the alphabet by his second, and was doing basic math problems by his third, each milestone was celebrated but accompanied by the mild sense that Howard was disappointed that he didn’t do it sooner. In any other family, Tony’s technical skills would have been appreciated for the small miracle that they were, but in this family, with an engineering genius like Howard Stark as a father and a musical savant like Maria for a mother, with someone like the magnificent Margaret Carter occasionally swooping in to bring the whole family back down to earth, Tony’s skills were seen as generally par for the course.  In any event, despite of all this, it would probably be more accurate to say that Tony Stark was actually born in a cave in Afghanistan, covered with blood, sweat, and dirt, having died just a little bit first.


	2. Trial by Fire

 

Ho Yinsen buried his head in his hands, ignoring the still-drying blood on them, and sighed deeply. Despite his best efforts, the brilliant but erratic Tony Stark had breathed his last on this dirty cot in this cold, dimly lit cave, dragged here already half-dead from the ambush on his convoy. Perhaps if there had been a crash cart to restart Tony's heart, blood transfusions to replace what he had lost, antibiotics for the inevitable infections…but instead Ho had only had sullen assistants more used to taking lives than saving them and a cave with fine-grained dirt that got everywhere.

Ho thought of his family, buried weeks ago after a similar attack on his home. “Guess I’ll be seeing you soon,” he muttered to himself as he pulled the blanket over Tony's body. Abu Bakaar was not going to be happy after losing such a valuable captive, he thought tiredly as he started to straighten up the room out of habit.

He was just throwing away the shredded suit that they'd cut off of Stark when behind him the dead body opened his eyes with a loud gasp and a flash of light that left spots in Ho’s eyes. He hadn’t been a practicing Muslim in a decade and had started actively hating God as he was digging the graves for his family, but when he heard a dead man coughing and cursing behind him he found himself instinctively reciting the shahada.

Slowly turning, he saw Stark blinking around the cave in confusion before he tried to sit up, jerking to a halt as he reached the end of the battery cables attached to the electromagnet Ho had embedded into his chest in a vain attempt to keep him alive. Stark’s gaze traveled around the cave, littered with weapons and machine parts and other detritus gathered up by the Ten Rings, before landing on Ho. Ho took an instinctive step back when Tony frowned and said, “Where the hell am I?”

Ho hesitated. He took off his glasses, wiped them off on the cleanest part of his soiled shirt, and put them back on. Stark was still sitting there, staring at him with a baffled anger as if _Ho_ were the strangest thing in the cave right now. “Southeast Afghanistan,” he said warily. “You’ve been captured by the Ten Rings after they attacked your convoy.” Ho gestured to the electromagnet in Stark’s chest. “You were…” _Dead_ , he thought. “Um…severely injured.”

Stark’s eyes followed his gesture, and as he stared down at his chest he started to pull the rust-red bandages away from his skin. “What-”

Ho rushed forward and grabbed Tony's hands as he started clawing at the device in his chest. “Calm down, you’re going to hurt…” Ho faltered as he looked down at Stark’s chest, where the skin around the embedded electromagnet was pink and shiny. His hands stilled and with a surprisingly calm breath he took a step back and made the sign of the evil eye, a superstitious gesture he hadn’t done since he was a child. “Bismullah al-Rahman al-Raheem,” he started, wondering if he had finally lost his mind.

“What did you do to me?” Stark said, voice rising as he stared at the ugly metal circle embedded into his sternum. “Why is this thing in my chest?”

“I-” Ho started to say _I saved your life_ , but he knew that wasn’t true. “You were caught in an explosion,” Ho said instead. He wiped his hands on his pants and forced himself to reach out and take Stark’s hand again, turning it over to check his pulse. Relief made his knees water when he found one, strong and steady. “I removed what shrapnel I could, but there’s a lot left trying to make its way into your atrial septum. The electromagnet,” he gestured towards Stark’s chest, “keeps it from entering your heart.”

Stark stared down at the device in his chest, breath fogging in the cold air of the cave, and then after a moment he zipped his coat closed, hiding it. “That’s all?”

“That’s all?” Ho repeated incredulously. “Do you know how difficult-” He stopped and pressed his lips together tightly. “That was the extent of your injuries, if that’s what you mean, other than a slight concussion.”

“So I hit my head?”

“Yes.” Stark nodded as if that explained something, but though Ho waited he didn’t elaborate. “Are you hungry?” Ho finally asked. The silence in the cave was making him uneasy.

Stark started to nod and stopped. “I think so,” he said slowly, and that was good enough for Ho. He opened up a can of beans and focused on warming it up, stealing glances at Stark as he stirred the pan on the coal stove in the center of the cave. The man ( _the dead man,_ Ho’s mind whispered) was wandering around the cave in a bit of a daze, car battery in his arms, taking note of the cots and the discarded medical supplies, the work tables lining the room and the hastily strung industrial lights casting harsh shadows in the windowless space.

“I’m Ho Yinsen, by the way,” Ho said as he stirred. “We met, years ago, at a technical conference in Bern.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember," Stark said apologetically as he came back to the stove, the only source of heat in the dank, musty space, and shivered a little as he sat back down on the cot he’d woken up on.

“You wouldn’t. You were quite drunk at the time," Ho said with a shrug. He cleared his throat. “How are you feeling?”

“Surprisingly good,” Stark said “Physically, I mean.”

That startled a laugh out of Ho. Surprising was an understatement. “What do you mean?”

“Do you…” Stark hesitated, wrapping his arms around himself as he stared at the red glow of the coals inside the stove. “Do you hear-”

Ho’s stomach dropped as the moment was disrupted by someone pounding on the metal door on the far side of the room. As Abu Bakaar and his thugs poured into the room, Ho urged Stark to his feet. “Do as I do,” he ordered under his breath, putting his hands in the air. Fortunately for them, Ho in particular, Abu Bakaar seemed well pleased that his valuable captive was alive and well.

“Welcome, Tony Stark, the most famous mass murderer in the history of America,” Abu Bakaar said in Arabic, then gestured for Ho to translate. “I am honored to meet you,” Abu Bakaar continued, and Ho repeated his words to Stark. Stark’s jaw was tight as he stared at Abu Bakaar, shoulders tense.

“He wants you to build a Jericho missile,” Ho explained, getting to the point of Abu Bakaar’s long-winded grandstanding. “This one,” he said as Abu Bakaar handed him a photo.

There was a long silence as Stark stared at the photo, and Abu Bakaar’s eyebrows went up in disbelief. “He is still very ill,” Ho apologized in Arabic. “Perhaps feverish.”

Abu Bakaar eyed Stark. “He does not seem ill.”

Ho could only smile nervously. “He will be well enough to do what you ask.”

“But is he willing?”

Ho opened his mouth to answer, trying to buy them some time, but at that moment Stark said “No” and dropped the photo to the ground, the defiant tilt of his chin leaving no doubt what his answer was. Ho was shoved backwards against the wall as Abu Bakaar had Stark dragged out of the room, metal door slamming shut behind them.

 

When the men shoved him into a chair and handcuffed his hands to the sides, Tony was still soaking wet and shivering, lungs aching from being half-drowned for God knows how long. The musty smelling hood over his head was pulled off, then he was flinching away from the sudden onslaught of bright lights, illuminating him and the men beside him. Out of the corner of his eye Tony saw the flag behind him, a red background with ten black rings and a pair of crossed swords making a big X in the middle. A small red light came on in front of him, and then the men at his sides were speaking in Arabic, gesturing angrily.

Tony realized that they must have taken them to their control room, their nerve center or headquarters, whatever you call it. Though he couldn’t see it because of the bright lights shining in his eyes,he could sense hear the self-satisfied murmur of computer from across the room and the inquisitive trilling of the cameras in front of him. Which, he knew on an intellectual level, should feel strange. It should be weird that he can hear electronics talking to themselves and taste electricity like mint on his tongue, but it didn’t _feel_ weird. It felt as natural as feeling sunlight and hearing the wind. He knew instinctively that he could tell the camera that it wasn’t recording and it wouldn’t and that if he told the computer to stop it would turn itself off. None of which made sense. But then, one moment he’d been cracking jokes and drinking whiskey in an HMV then it was raining fire and metal then there were dim memories of agonizing pain, and none of that made sense either. At this point he was just rolling with it and saving the freakout for later; he also wasn’t discounting the possibility that he was, in fact, losing his mind.

***

Abu Bakaar’s men came for him again a few days later, dragging them both from the depths of the cave and leaving them blinking in the sudden bright sunlight. As Tony stumbled forward, his heart sank and his stomach turned as Abu Bakaar led him past stacks and stacks of boxes with Stark Industries written on the side. Around them, scattered on the boulders that surrounded the mouth of the cave, dozens of fighters held their weapons at the ready; some of the rifles were Russian, a few German, and more than a few were of his own designs.

“What do you think?” Yinsen translated for Abu Bakaar, and the bearded thug’s eyes gleamed with smug satisfaction as he noted Tony’s dismay.

“I think you have a lot of my weapons already,” Tony said roughly. Bile rose in his throat as he thought of all those soldiers in his convoy, of _Rhodey_ , being killed and injured by things he had made that had somehow ended up in the hands of these people.

“We have everything you need to build the Jericho,” Yinsen continued translating. “When you are done, he will set you free.” Yinsen’s voice was carefully neutral at that, and Tony wondered if the man in front of him truly thought he was that stupid.

But he hadn’t forgotten the days before, the endless rounds of being held underwater until his lungs were screaming, coughing and gagging for a breath of air before being thrust under again. “No, he won’t,” he said, even as held out his hand to Abu Bakaar and smiled as if they had a deal.

“No, he won’t,” Yinsen echoed, forcing a smile as well.

 

“How do they have so many of my weapons?” Stark asked numbly as he collapsed heavily onto his cot, pulling a blanket over his shoulders as if the sight of those crates had physically chilled him.

“I don’t know,” Ho said, sitting down on his own bed and holding his hands out to warm them by the coal stove. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters!” Stark’s head came up sharply and he stopped when he saw Yinsen watching him, one eyebrow raised. “What are you trying to say?”

“Your weapons have been flooding this country for years, Stark. That injury of yours,” he said, gesturing towards Stark’s chest, “I’ve seen it many times in my village. Does it only matter to you now that you are on the receiving end of them?

“No, of course not!” Stark stood and paced as far as the electrical cables would let him, which is to say he circled the cot that the car battery was resting on. “I didn’t know!”

“Well now you do.” He sat back against one of the wooden pillars supporting the roof of the cave and crossed his arms over his chest. “What you saw is your legacy, Stark. Your life’s work in the hands of terrorists and murderers. What do you plan to do about it?”

Stark glanced at him sharply and continued pacing. After a while, he sat back down on his cot, the red glow of the coals highlighting his face; dirt was already darkening his skin and his hair was greasy and flat, clothes tattered and stained. In short, he looked light years away from the perfectly dressed, suave billionaire Ho had met in Bern. But when Stark glanced over at him, scratching at the stubble on his jaw and eyes calculating, it was easy to recognize the genius in him. “You’re right,” he said finally. Despite himself, Ho started feeling a thread of hope as Stark reached for his car battery and stood up. “I’ve got an idea.”

***

The feeling that Tony got when the arc reactor clicked into place in his chest was indescribable. It felt like being in the eye of a hurricane or standing on the top of a tall building and having an entire city spread at his feet; it was promise and power and potential all in one. Closing his eyes, he could sense the cell phones, tiny primitive spots of light in his mind, in the pockets of the guards at the door, the computers in the room dozens of meters away, even the slumbering missiles stacked outside the cave. He took a deep breath and the smell of damp rock and hot metal brought him back from wherever his mind had gone, centering him in his body. When he opened his eyes, a flash of…something crossed Yinsen’s face and he made an aborted motion with his hands before putting them in his pockets.

“What?” Tony asked, blinking as he threw his legs over the side of the cot and sat up. “Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing, just…a trick of the light,” Ho said, trying not to stare at the thin ring of glowing blue surrounding Stark's normally brown irises. He took his glasses off and polished the lenses, and by the time he put them back on the glow had faded. Clearing his throat, he said, “So what’s next in this grand plan of yours?”

Stark stood and gestured for Ho to follow him to his table. He collected a sheaf of papers and stacked them together neatly and held them up to a light for Ho to see. “To get out of here, I’m going to need to be bulletproof,” he said as Ho studied the schematics for what looked like a blocky, bulky robot. “So I’m going to make myself bulletproof.”

“A clever plan,” Ho commented. “But you know you’re being watched, right?” He pointed at camera near the roof of the cave. “Abu Bakaar and his men will know if you are not doing what you promised.”

To his surprise, Stark barely spared the camera a glance. “That little guy? Nah. They’re only going to see what I want them to,” he said absently.

“What do you mean? You hacked the camera?” Ho stared at him and then at the camera. He’d been with Stark almost non-stop and he hadn’t gone anywhere near it.

“Yeah, sure. Let’s call it that,” Stark said vaguely. “I made another list of materials,” he added, clearly trying to change the subject as he handed Ho a sheet of paper.

For a long minute Ho didn’t move, remembering the flash of light and the sharp stab of fear he’d felt the day Stark had woken up. He’d tried telling himself that he’d made a mistake, that Stark had not been dead, his pulse had just been too weak to feel, but in his heart he knew Stark had been dead. Not dying, but dead, and now he was here, bustling around this dank, dark cave like none of that had ever happened. At that moment he felt a stab of deep, atavistic fear of the man in front of him – if he was indeed still a man and not-

Then Stark turned and tripped over his cot, cursing, and the moment was gone.

***

“Say it again,” Yinsen ordered over the sound of the bolt gun as he fastened the metal armor on Tony. Tony took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to slow his racing heart as the metal tightened around him.

“Forty-one steps straight ahead. Then sixteen steps. Fork right, thirty-three steps, turn right," he recited obediently. "How much time do we have?” He asked, trying to crane his neck around to see the computer.

Yinsen glanced at the screen and then turned back to what he was doing, moving a bit faster this time. “Enough,” he lied.

There was the sound of the window panel in the door sliding open, then someone was yelling at them. “Guess not,” Tony said grimly. “Say something!”

“I don’t – um –“ After a moment of sputtering Yinsen yelled something, but whatever it was apparently hadn’t been good enough because they could hear the sound of the men opening the latch that barred their door. They both braced themselves for the ensuing explosion as the terrorists triggered the booby-trap they’d set, and as the dust cleared Yinsen started moving faster than before.

“Well, that certainly did the trick,” Yinsen said, sparing a glance at the dead men sprawled on the floor and the huge metal doors that had been blown off their hinges.

“That’s what I do,” Tony said. He gestured with his chin to the computer since his arms were already bound in the suit. “We need to initialize the power sequence.”

“Okay,” Yinsen dropped the bolt gun and turned to the computer. “What do I-”

“Function 11. Tell me when you see a progress bar,” Tony said, trying to keep his voice level even as urgency was making his pulse race. It wouldn’t take long for the rest of the Ten Rings to come and investigate the explosion, and until the suit was powered up they were both a sitting ducks.

“I have it,” Yinsen said over his shoulder.

“Press control ‘I.’ ‘I’ and then enter, then come finish buttoning me up,” Tony said. They could both hear the echoes of men yelling as they came down the corridor.

“Okay, okay.” Tony could see the screen as the progress bar started moving, then Yinsen turned and grabbed the bolt gun again.

"Just every other one, okay?” Tony said, trying to keep his voice low and even as Yinsen started glancing with increasing nervousness towards the open mouth of their room. “It doesn’t have to be pretty, just get it done.”

“They’re coming,” Yinsen said under his breath, hands fumbling a bit on the bolts.

“Just get it done,” Tony repeated. “It will be fine, just get it done.” Finally it was done, not as well as Tony had hoped, but it would have to do. Now they were just waiting for the power sequencing program to finish, but Tony could see that the bar wasn’t far enough along.

“We need more time,” Yinsen muttered, staring at the screen.

“No!” Tony said, instinctively trying to move towards Yinsen, forgetting that he had hundreds of pounds of metal weighing him down, all of it dead weight until that progress bar was finished. “Listen to me. Remember, make sure the checkpoints are clear before you follow me out, ok?”

“We need more time,” Yinsen said again. He straightened, and when he turned to face Tony, he was calm. So calm that Tony felt a stab of cold fear in his chest. “I’m going to buy you some time.”

“No! Stick to the plan!” Tony shouted, but Yinsen was already gone. “Yinsen!” Tony called after him, struggling to move his metal suit as he heard bursts of gunfire at the mouth of the cave, moving away from him down the corridor. Turning to the ancient laptop, Tony narrowed his eyes and reached out to it, pushing the processor to work harder, faster; he could tell that he was overclocking the old machine, forcing a current through wires and transistors that weren’t built for it. He took another deep breath and blew it out slowly, concentrating; if he pushed too hard and the computer melted down, this suit of armor would become his coffin.

System by system, Tony felt the suit go live. As it drew power from the generator to initiate, the lights dimmed, and the sound of the feet in the hallway slowed their approach. Tony took a step out of the frame that had been holding the suit, breaking the chains that had been supporting its weight with a shrug of his shoulders, and tested his range of motion. It was awkward and ungainly, but as he backhanded one of the fighters and threw him across the cave, he’d never felt more powerful and alive.

He could feel the vibrations as bullets hit the suit and ricocheted off but so far none of them had done more than dent or scratch the armor. He hadn’t had much time to weaponized the suit, but being able to stride up to the men shooting at him and throw them out of his way was supremely satisfying. Each step he took, however, he looked for Yinsen, praying that he had taken cover when the bullets had started flying. As he counted through the paces and path he'd memorized that led to the entrance, he could see daylight ahead, glowing brightly. If he hadn't been in this tin can he would have run towards it.

As he turned the corner, he found Yinsen, bloody and laying across bags of stolen fertilizer, like he had gotten this far and could go no farther.

Or like he'd been left there as bait.

“Watch out!” Yinsen croaked, throwing an arm out towards the entrance of the cave. Tony stopped just in time to dodge an RPG, throwing an arm up as chips of rock fell from the ceiling. With a snarl, Tony fired back, sending off a rocket that was more of a firework than a missile, but it got the job done; it hit the ceiling and part of it collapsed on the fighter, burying him. Tony turned away before the dust had even settled, dropping laboriously to one knee next to Yinsen.

“Come on, we got to go,” he said, raising the face plate. “Come on, stand up for me. We had a plan.”

“No, Stark,” Yinsen whispered, his hands pressed against his abdomen as blood welled darkly around his fingers. “This was always the plan.”

“No,” Tony said. His hands hovered over Yinsen, wanting to help him to his feet but too afraid of hurting him to try. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. You were going to go see your family, that’s what you said.”

“My family is dead,” Yinsen said, voice ragged as he struggled to breathe. “I am going to see them now.”

“Not yet,” Tony pleaded. “I can- maybe I can fix this,” he said trying to reach out to Yinsen’s body the same way he did to the laptop, but he couldn’t. Muscle and blood and bone didn’t listen to him the same way that wires and circuits did. “Just hang on,” he said instead. “I’ll get help.”

“No, I want this.” Yinsen’s voice was getting weaker, and Tony could hear yelling come from outside as more fighters approached the cave. “I want this,” he repeated.

Tony swallowed thickly. They both knew there wasn’t time for anything else but goodbyes, but there was so much that Tony wanted to say now that he knew this was the only chance he’d have to say it. “I haven’t thanked you for saving my life,” he said around the tightness in his throat. “For saving me.”

Yinsen’s breath was becoming more labored. “You’ve been given...a gift,” he forced out, raising a shaking hand to point at the arc reactor. “Don’t...don’t waste it.”

Tony looked down at the arc reactor and wondered if Yinsen was talking about his strange new abilities, if he’d known about them this whole time. “I won’t,” Tony promised, hoping Yinsen could still hear him even as his eyes closed. “But I don’t…” _know how_ , he started to say, but he did know. It started with destroying the stockpiles of weapons sitting outside this cave and stopping the people who owned them.  After that...

Tony exhaled shakily. He knew the smart thing to do would be to get up and go outside, set all of those missiles on fire, and get as far away from here as possible before reinforcements arrived, but instead he stayed, listening as Yinsen’s breathing grew rougher and farther apart until it stopped all together. His eyes were burning and he couldn’t breathe around the knot in his chest but he stayed, even past the last breath, listening to all the breaths that should have come but didn’t, until the first gunshot snapped him out of it.

The rest of it happened in a blur. As he stepped out of the cave into a rain of bullets, he forced the fighters back with his flame-thrower before turning them on the crates of missiles, flinching as the first of them exploded in a ball of fire. The ringing of bullets on his metal armor was almost constant now, and he swore as a bright flare of pain shot up from his right hand, which was protected only by heavy leather gloves. He knew it was time to go but still he hesitated, unwilling to leave Yinsen’s body behind. But the rest of the Ten Rings were starting to close in on him, so with a final mental goodbye he ignited the thrusters strapped to his legs and shot into the sky.


	3. Revelation

One week, three flights, four doctors and a chaotic press conference later, Tony was finally home, with its echoing rooms, the bed that was now way too soft to be comfortable, and the wide expanse of ocean outside his windows that frankly made him feel a bit agoraphobic. The only relief from the emptiness was the comforting presence of JARVIS that he could feel in the walls when he roamed from room to room, but he didn't truly feel at home until he went to his lab. The first time he sat down behind his desk, with everything sitting just as he left it all those months ago, he almost cried. He didn’t know how he was supposed to fit with Pepper and Rhodey and Obie now, after everything, but this, _this_ was home.

Then DUM-E wheeled itself over and handed him an empty coffee cup with the familiar, faint whirring of its articulating arm, and Tony _did_ cry. Because now he could hear DUM-E, its eagerness to please, the way its relatively simple algorithmic subroutines had created pathways of mute adoration. “Hey buddy,” he said as he took his coffee cup, managing to laugh a little around the tightness in his throat. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against DUM-E’s arm; with his eyes closed the mental input from all of the electronics in his lab was almost overwhelming.

“I’ve gotta turn the volume down on this thing or I’m going to go crazy,” he muttered to himself, straightening and turning to his computer. “Hell, I gotta figure this thing _out_ or I’m going to go crazy.” Talking to Rhodey was a no-go because Rhodey was pretty pissed at him, which he didn’t expect but probably should have. In the couple of days he’d spent with him in Germany he probably should have mentioned what he was planning, but at that point he was more focused on surviving the battery of medical tests and doctors appointments without accidentally upgrading the MRI machine or blowing up another transformer when he had a bad dream. And after the press conference and ensuing stock market disaster Pepper and Obie probably had enough on their plates right now.

But there was one person he could talk to who wouldn’t freak out, who could be trusted to listen and give him advice without getting weird about it. “JARVIS,” he said. “New file. Let’s call it…” He flipped a drafting pencil through his fingers as he thought. “Project Genesis,” he said finally. I’m going to list some variables and I need you to do a search for any references.”

“Which sources, sir?”

“Everything. Everything you can get, classified and unclassified, any and all languages. Are you ready?”

“Yes, sir."

He didn’t know how long he spent down there in his lab, poring over circuit boards and engines and hard drives, trying in a more or less systematic fashion to figure out the limits of his powers. Metal didn’t respond to his powers unless electricity ran through it; when he walked through his garage, the classic cars spoke to him less than the newer models. He spread his palms over the hood of his latest Tesla and smiled as it responded to his thoughts, revving the engine and changing the stations on the radio without getting behind the wheel or even retrieving the key. Everything he learned he dictated to JARVIS, the list of powers getting longer but not bringing him any closer to an answer. A piece of sharp metal told him he wasn’t immune to damage, though he was surprised to notice that it had already healed sometime later. He wasn’t any stronger than he was before, and as much as he stared at a piece of paper on the floor he didn’t shoot lasers or move it with his mind or make it catch on fire.

“Any other ideas, JARVIS?”

“I’ll compile a list from the online archives of comic book heroes, sir,” JARVIS said dryly. He caught something moving out of the corner of his eye and saw Pepper come down the stairs and type in her code to enter the lab.

“Jesus, Tony, are you still awake? Have you even gone to bed since the last time I saw you?” Pepper looked down at his shirt, saw that it was the same one he’d been wearing yesterday, and sighed. “You need to sleep, Tony, you’re not superhuman.”

“But what if I was, though?” Tony said without thinking as she started nudging him towards the door of his lab.

“What are you talking about?” She was checking her watch as she herded him out and he could tell that her thoughts were far away.

“What if I did have superpowers?” Something in the tone of his voice must have told her that he was being serious, because she stopped and looked him the eye.

“Superpowers?” she repeated skeptically. “Like what?”

“Like anything. Flying,” he said, already regretting this conversation a little when Pepper kept looking at him with those eyes that saw him far too clearly. “What if, in that cave in Afghanistan, I realized that I could do things that no one else could?”

“Tony, you’ve always been able to do things that no one else could,” she said, gesturing around his lab. “I don’t understand what you are getting at.”

"I don't either." Tony exhaled and ran his hands through his hair. “Never mind,” he said, and Pepper’s eyes softened.

“Come on, Tony. Get some sleep. Everything will seem clearer in the morning, I promise.”

Tony let her shuffle him to bed, suddenly feeling exhausted. "Pepper, do you think that one person can change the world?" He asked as she turned to leave, staring at his reflection in the floor to ceiling windows of his bedroom, wondering if anyone else noticed that the blue glow of the arc reactor seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat.

He heard her blow out a thoughtful breath and then she said, "Yes, I do. In the right place at the right time, I do believe one person can change the world." Tony nodded and turned away from the windows and Pepper said, “Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Tony said, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Thanks, Pep. Guess I just needed to hear that. Good night.”

To his surprise, he actually slept. And the next morning, things actually did feel clearer. Yinsen had said he’d been given a gift and had made him realize that his entire legacy, the Stark empire itself, was built on death and destruction. Not building weapons anymore was the first step towards fixing that but it wouldn’t undo the damage that had already been done, and it wouldn’t keep people like the Ten Rings from doing more.

He pulled up the holographic blueprints of the suit he’d made in Afghanistan, studying it pensively. He wouldn’t waste his gift, just like he had promised Yinsen. He already knew of dozens of things that Stark Industries could build instead of weapons, things that could change the world for the better. But first, he had some cleaning up to do.

“JARVIS, keep running Project Genesis,” he said finally, “but let’s open up a new project as well. We’re going to call this one Mark Two.”

***

Two weeks later, Tony sighed and rolled his shoulders as he trudged up the stairs from his lab, wincing as his back was already starting to stiffen. On the way to the shower, he poured himself a few fingers of whiskey, wishing he felt better about what he’d done today. He’d saved those villagers and destroyed a cache full of Stark weapons, but now that he was back home it all felt so...pointless. Was this going to fix anything, using the Mark Two to play whack-a-mole with a bunch of terrorists? Was this what Yinsen had hoped for him?

He stepped under the hot spray and let the water massage his tired muscles; his thoughts were drifting when he felt the proximity sensor go off and realized he had been in the shower long enough to get pruney. “Who is it, JARVIS?” he asked, turning off the water and grabbing a towel.

“Obadiah Stane, sir.” JARVIS pulled up the security cameras, showing Obie climbing out of his car, briefcase under one arm as he wrestled a giant pizza out of the car.

“Huh.” Tony pulled on a pair of sweats and a shirt and opened the door as Obie came up the stairs. “New York went that badly, did it?” he asked as he took the pizza out of Obie’s hands and followed him inside.

“Don’t be so pessimistic,” Obie said. “Just because I brought a pizza back from New York doesn’t mean the board meeting went badly.” Tony gave him a skeptical look as he put the pizza on the coffee table and opened it. “But it would have been better if you had been there,” he admitted as Tony grabbed a slice.

“You told me to lay low so that’s what I’ve been doing,” he said around a mouthful of pizza.

“By laying low I meant avoid the press, not avoid the board of directors,” Obie said as he sat down on the couch next to Tony. He slid the pizza over and opened up his briefcase, setting his laptop to the side and pulling out a stack of papers. “The board said they sent you some proposals-”

“If it’s the ones they emailed me, you’re wasting your time. When I said ‘no weapons’ I meant no weapons, not ‘less weapons’ or ‘different weapons.’”

Obie exhaled with frustration and tossed the papers in an armchair. “You’re not making this very easy, Tony.”

“I know, Obie, and I’m sorry, but it’s the right thing to do. I just need you to stall them for a few more weeks and I’ll have a whole portfolio of new product lines for them, I swear.”

Obie eyed him as he picked up a slice of pizza as well. “Is that one of them?” he asked, gesturing with his pizza towards the arc reactor in Tony’s chest. “Because if you’d just let our scientists scan it-”

“No, this one stays with me,” Tony said. “But gimme two weeks and the R&D department will be having a field day, I promise.”

“Alright, Tony. I’ll do what I can.” He put his half-eaten slice of pizza back in the box and stood. “I gotta get going, I just wanted to stop by on my way home and see how you were doing.”

"I'm fine. Keeping busy." Tony stretched out an arm and handed Obie the stack of proposals from the board. “You might as well take these,” he said. “But you can leave the pizza.”

“Nope, the pizza stays with me.” Obie dropped the papers into his briefcase and closed the box to the pizza, hitting the back of Tony’s hand as he snatched another piece out before it closed. “Will you put my laptop in there for me? I need to wash my hands.”

“Sure.” When Tony picked up the laptop, he didn’t mean to listen to the contents, the same way you don’t mean to eavesdrop on conversations in a public place. But Obie must have left a program open because as soon as Tony’s fingertips touched it, it felt like someone was talking right in his ear. Tony’s eyebrows furrowed as he stared down at the closed computer, trying to understand what he was hearing.

“Tony? Are you alright?” Obie said, frowning with concern as he dried his hands.

“You…” He looked up to meet Obie’s eyes, having a hard time finding the words to shape the enormity of the realization blooming in his thoughts. “You tried to have me killed.”

Obie frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“You tried to have me killed,” he repeated, louder this time, rising to his feet. “You threw me to the wolves, and a lot of good people died.”

“That’s insane,” Obie said, but Tony didn’t hear him because the laptop in his hands was whispering more secrets to him, spilling years and years of Obie’s misdeeds; every incident of arm sales and bribed officials spun off into dozens of others, a looming spiderweb of venality and greed.

“It’s all right here,” Tony said stunned, hefting the laptop. “All of it, years and years of dealing over the table to America and under the table to America’s enemies. You _bastard._ ”

“Tony, you’re not in your right mind, you have no idea what you are saying-”

“Don’t lie to me, Stane!” Tony threw the laptop at him and Stane swatted it out of the air, sending it crashing to the floor. “The video says it all, right there on your goddamn computer!” Tony remembered when they made it, the chatty cameras and the taciturn terrorists, the guns pointed at him. The video had been meant for _Stane -_ but not for ransom.

For extortion.

“Why? Weren’t you already making enough money? Did you pay them to kill me because you wanted it all?” Tony pulled his phone out to call the cops. “Tired of always being the bridesmaid but never the bride?”

Obie crossed the room with giant strides and jerked the phone from Tony’s hand, ending the call and tossing the it to the side. “Listen here, you little shit,” he said, getting close enough that he loomed over Tony. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish with this little display, but I’m not going to let you ruin everything.”

“ _Me_ ruin everything?” Tony shouted, putting his hands on Obie’s chest and shoving backwards. There was a sharp crack and a flash of light and Obie cried out, going to one knee. “Do you know how many people you’ve killed? Selling weapons with my name on them to terrorists? _”_ Tony clenched his hands and raised a fist to hit him, but out of the corner of his eye he saw something on his hand. Taking a step back, he realized that sparks were arcing between his fingers, traveling from his palms to his fingertips like a Jacob’s ladder. Blue light was drawing lines under his skin all the way up to the sleeves at his elbows, lighting him up from the inside out. The sight was enough to surprise Tony out of his shocked rage, so he took another step back, throttling down his anger, and went to where the laptop was lying cracked on floor.

“It’s over, Obadiah,” he said as he stooped to pick it up. He heard Obadiah get to his feet, but Tony kept staring at the laptop in his hands, unable to look at him. “This ends now.”

“You think you get to dictate the terms here?” Obadiah rasped, and when Tony looked up there was a pistol trained on him. Tony froze at the sight, holding the laptop in front of him like a shield. “I don’t know how you are doing this, but you don’t get to ruin _me_ ,” he spat. “You should have been dead months ago.”

“Oh, so now you are going to kill me yourself?” Tony sneered, eyes not wavering from the gun. “Cut out the middleman?” His heart was hammering as he tried to figure out what to do. Obadiah was blocking the door, with only the windows overlooking the ocean at his back.

“You attacked _me,_ remember?” Obadiah edged towards his briefcase and fumbled for something in one of the pockets. “After months of captivity and then weeks of isolation, it wouldn’t be hard to convince the police that you lost your mind in Afghanistan and snapped when you realized you were losing control of Stark Industries-"

Tony chucked the laptop at Obadiah’s head and dived for his legs when the man automatically flinched, wincing as Stane turned to catch himself and landed heavily on top of him. Obadiah didn’t drop the weapon but Tony managed to get his hands on his wrist, keeping the pistol pointed up and away. They wrestled for the gun, but Obadiah was heavier and taller, and it was only a matter of time before one of his attempted punches or kicks made contact and Tony lost his grip.

“JARVIS, call the cops!” he shouted, grunting as Obadiah kneed him in the stomach.

“Dammit, Tony, you have always been such a pain in my ass,” Obadiah gritted out, and he kept a grip on the pistol with one hand and wrapped the other around Tony’s throat, squeezing tightly as his lips curled in a snarl.

“Tony?”

Tony’s stomach dropped and his veins filled with ice as he heard Pepper’s voice.“Pepper! Stop!” Tony tried to shout, but it only came out a thin wheeze around Obadiah’s grip on his neck.

Tony saw the look on Obadiah’s face as his eyes cut to where Pepper had just opened the door. Despite the hand at his throat, Tony yanked on Obadiah’s wrist with all his strength just as pistol started to swerve, and this time when the sparks came he let them flow. There was the sharp smell of something burning and then Obadiah collapsed silently, body going limp against Tony’s, eyes staring blankly into nothing. Where Tony’s hands had been wrapped around Obadiah’s arm, his clothes were charred and the skin under them was red and blistered. He shoved Obadiah off of him and crawled away, coughing around what felt like shards of glass in his throat.

“Oh my God! Tony!” Pepper started to rush towards him and Tony flinched, backing away before she could touch him. “What happened?” she asked, crouching next to him. “Are you okay?”

“He tried to kill me,” he said hoarsely, and Pepper looked down and saw the gun in Obadiah’s hand. She made a disgusted noise and kicked it away with the toe of her high heeled shoe before pulling out her phone. “I mean, he - he tried to have me-”

“Tell me later,” she said, tilting her head to look at the reddening marks on Tony’s neck and winced. “Rest your throat, I’m going to call the police.”

“JARVIS already…” he started, but she was in full Pepper mode, already giving out orders to the police dispatcher, so he dragged himself over to couch and collapsed against it, staring down at his hands. The spark was gone along with his anger, leaving just a sick empty feeling in his stomach. He closed his hands into fists and tucked them under his arms. Absently, he realized he was starting to shake. He curled his knees up and rested his head on them, trying to will back the pressure in his chest and the absurd feeling that he wanted to cry. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and saw Obadiah’s laptop out of the corner of his eye, half-hidden underneath an armchair. Making sure Pepper wasn’t looking, he smoothed his hands over the cracked casing and fixed the jarred processors inside, making sure that the damage was only cosmetic by the time Pepper stopped pacing and came to sit next to him.

“They’ll be here soon,” she said, gesturing to the phone. “I’m on hold with the dispatcher.” Silently, Tony handed her the laptop. “What’s this?”

“Obadiah’s laptop,” he croaked, grimacing at the raw pain in his throat. “It’s all here.”

“What is?” She automatically opened it and frowned as she clicked through the open screens. “What am I looking at?” He reached over and opened the video for her, the one that had been made by the Ten Rings in Afghanistan. “Oh my God,” she said as she started listening to the translated version. “Oh my _God!”_

“Yeah.” Tony let his head fall back against the couch as she watched it, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out how he was going to explain the fact that he had electrocuted Obadiah with his bare hands.

***

Days later, Tony wrapped his hands around his coffee mug and stared at the sleek red and gold suit in front of him. He hadn’t touched it since that day; his enthusiasm for the project had dimmed as he had dug into Stane's dirty financial dealings, particularly when he’d learned that Stane had been working with the Ten Rings to build a suit of his own. At least now he had an answer to the question he’d asked Yinsen all those months ago - _Stane_ was the reason why the Ten Rings had so many of Tony’s weapons. There were still a lot of Stark weapons in the wrong hands, but now that Tony was shutting off the pipeline, even that problem would get better with time. With a sigh, he wondered if maybe it wasn’t a better idea to keep the Mach Two under wraps; if one person really could save the world, then by the same logic, one person could destroy it, and he’d come so close to helping Stane be that person by trusting him too much.

“Sir,” JARVIS said, breaking into his thoughts, “Ms. Potts is calling again.”

“Send her to voicemail,” Tony said, rubbing his eyes tiredly. He didn’t know how much longer he was going to be able to keep people at bay, but ever since Stane he just...couldn’t.

“Also, there is a Special Agent Coulson from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division at the front door.”

Frowning, Tony set his cup aside and accessed the cameras to the front door, studying the middle-aged white man in a suit standing at his front door, smiling blandly at the camera. “What does he want?” he started to ask JARVIS, then he shook his head and went upstairs to talk to the man himself.

“What do you want?” he said as he threw open the door, blinking at the bright sunshine after so many hours in his lab.

“I’d like to speak to you about your escape from the Ten Rings, Mr. Stark. I also have a few questions about Obadiah Stane and an unauthorized intervention in a small town in Afghanistan called Gulmira.” Agent Coulson’s polite smile never wavered even as Tony’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead.

After a moment Tony opened the door wider and took a step back. “Maybe you should come inside.”


	4. The Harbinger

_ The Tesseract has awakened.  _

_ It is on a little world. A human world. They would wield its power, but our ally knows its workings as they never will. He is ready to lead, and our force, our Chitauri, will follow. The world will be his, the universe, yours. And the humans…what can they do, but burn? _

The Other’s words echoed in Loki’s head as he walked the dark ways towards Earth, using the siren call of the Tesseract as a beacon to guide his passage, longing for the oblivion of sleep. What he had survived at the hands of the Other as it bent him to its will had left him drained almost beyond endurance, and this walk was much farther than anything he had ever attempted. Only the geas burning in his bones and the power of the staff the Other had granted him was keeping him on his feet. Every time he reached towards the Tesseract, it flared at the contact, and though he was still too far away, he knew that once he had it safely in his possession it would welcome him. Then he could finally rest.

After what felt like an eternity, there came a time that when he reached for the Tesseract, he was close enough that its power leapt to his touch and answered his command. He had arrived, and he gratefully used its eager power to open the door to Midgard. The dizzying explosion of light and heat and sound, where there had only been silence and darkness, was staggering and he fell to one knee.

He stood as quickly as his aching, tired body would allow, aware that he was not alone. No one spoke as the Tesseract’s residual energy sizzled and danced around the room like flames, each apparently waiting for the other to make the first move. Loki saw that there were only a handful of humans in the room and only some of them were armed; dealing with them would be child’s play even without his staff.

“Sir, please put down the spear,” one of the men ordered, breaking the silence. Loki looked down at the staff and smiled.

***

A couple of hundred miles away, Tony woke himself up by flailing out of bed and falling onto the floor, the energy under his skin buzzing so much that it was lighting him up from the inside, shining a faint blue glow on the sheets he was tangled up in.

“What. The fuck,” he said with feeling, heart still racing from whatever the hell had happened while he was asleep. Something big, something with the power payload of the entire electrical output of New York City put together, had just gone off not too far away and Tony felt like he’d gotten caught in the aftershocks. The sudden surge of power was like being caught by an enormous wave, like he'd been dragged off his feet and tumbled through spacetime before being washed back up into consciousness. Even now he felt disoriented and dizzy.

He rubbed his temples until the feeling faded into a simple headache, then freed himself from his sheet and took a shower. “JARVIS,” he said loudly over the sound of the water, letting the heat and steam coax the residual tension from his muscles. “Set an alert for all news stations, keywords explosion, blast, anything that would explain a large release of energy all at once.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

Turns out he got his answers a few hours later when Agent Coulson arrived. 

He didn’t really notice when Coulson left, already preoccupied by the hologram of a bright blue cube cradled in his hand. His other hand was resting on the computer terminal built into the table, his mind absorbing information straight from the hard drive faster than his eyes could have ever moved. In a flash he knew all about the deceptive little cube’s tangled history, it's role during World War II and the projects that came after, then his thoughts flickered over to the thief, Loki. The security video that captured Loki’s arrival wasn’t included in the information that Coulson provided, but it didn’t take Tony long to find it anyway. The timestamp of the flash of light and Loki’s appearance matched up perfectly with his dream.

“Well that explains that,” Tony said absently. “JARVIS, add ‘remote energy sensing’ to the list of powers please.” He rewound the video and paused it when Loki stood and realized he was surrounded, his leather getup still – steaming? Smoking? – from his arrival. “You looked like you got dragged through hell backwards,” he mused, zooming in as much as possible on the man's face, drumming his fingers on the computer. After a moment, he let the video play at half speed, trying to figure out how the man’s staff was firing those energy blasts. “What are you doing here? What are you planning? And what the hell, exactly, is that cube and that staff  _ made  _ of?”


	5. Omens

“Stark?”

“In a minute,” Tony answered absently, scratching his jaw. It had been almost a week since he’d been woken up by Loki’s arrival, and now Loki himself was safely stowed away in the strongest prison SHIELD could design while the most sophisticated search algorithm that _Tony_ could design was searching for the Tesseract. In the meantime, Tony was absorbed in studying Loki’s scepter; now that he had the time to study it, he realized that the staff wasn’t an inert piece of metal with a flashy glowing stone in it, it was a machine, a tool, beautifully crafted in the shape of a weapon. Inside the unfamiliar metal were circuits and switchboards of a configuration so advanced that Tony could only admire them, all meant to channel and shape the energy given off by the gem. On the visual spectrum, the gem was giving off a pretty blue light, and Tony could also see the gamma radiation coming off it as well, but there was something else there, something that the lab’s scanners weren’t sophisticated enough to pick up. Tony’s brow furrowed as he tried to figure it out, tried to isolate it from all of the other energy signatures, but it was like one of those Magic Eye things – as much as he concentrated on it, the picture just wouldn’t appear.

“Tony?”

“Hold on,” Tony said irritably. Something about this rock seemed familiar, but Tony couldn’t place it. He was reaching out to take the staff off its display cradle, wanting to get the information that having it in his hands would provide, when someone grabbed his wrist.

“That’s probably not a good idea until we understand what we’re dealing with,” Steve Rogers said sharply. Tony narrowed his eyes and tugged his arm from Rogers’ grip.

“Understanding what we’re dealing with is what we’re doing here, if you haven’t noticed,” he said, but he moved away from the staff. As much as he wanted to get his hands on the thing, his eyes might start doing that blue glowy trick they did sometimes and he didn’t want to deal with what would happen if someone noticed.

“Well, you’re also supposed to be locating the Cube,” Rogers said. “Any luck with that?”

As Bruce explained their algorithm, Tony massaged the bridge of his nose; staring the gem had given him the strangest headache, a pressure like his brain was trying to expand out of his skull. In the middle of Bruce’s explanation, Natasha and the others came into the lab and started arguing; it didn’t take long before the noise of the squabbling combined with the continuous noise from the helicarrier itself became excruciating.

“For God’s sake, will everyone shut up!” he finally snapped, and the room fell silent. Into the silence, the computer suddenly beeped.

“We got it,” Bruce said in surprise as he went over to the monitor where the location was flashing on the screen.

“Send me the coordinates,” Tony said over his shoulder, rubbing his temples and already heading to where his suit was being stored. “I can get there the fastest.”

“You’re not going in alone,” Rogers said, like he thought Tony was a child in need of parental supervision.

“And how exactly are you going to stop me?” Tony challenged. As Rogers tried to stare him down, he heard Bruce say something from across the room but before he could turn his head to answer fire flashed up through the vents in the floor, the pressure wave breaking every bit of glass in the room and throwing everyone off their feet. Tony shook his head, ears ringing and hip aching from where he’d been thrown into a desk and tried to get to his feet.

“Go get your suit!” he heard Rogers say as if from far away and felt a hand under his elbow helping him to his feet and pulling him towards the door. Still disoriented, he followed Rogers down the hall, unable to concentrate around the helicarrier’s shrill and incessant screaming, louder in his head than the alarms were in his ears. So many systems were damaged that Tony didn’t know where to start triaging; engines were failing, the air recirculation systems were compromised, guidance systems were on the fritz, the retroreflective panels were completely offline – as he stumbled towards his suit, Tony felt like he was in an emergency room with a gunshot victim, desperately trying to stem the bleeding, but instead of one life at stake there were thousands.

“There was an external detonation,” Tony heard through his communicator. “We need someone to get outside and patch the engine.”

“I’m on it,” he said automatically as his suit closed around him. The soothing hum of the electronics inside softened the pained shrieks of the damaged helicarrier somewhat, but it was still loud enough to set his teeth on edge. Rogers started to follow him but Tony waved him away. “Go help the others,” he said. “I’ve got this.”

He wasn’t quite so confident when he got outside and saw the damage; the supercooling conduits were down and a piece of wreckage was blocking the rotors, and from what he could tell the electrical network driving the turbines was in shambles. “I’m so sorry, beautiful,” he said to the wounded helicarrier, patting it comfortingly as he got to work. The debris was dealt with first, lasered into manageable pieces and jettisoned into the clouds below, but that was the easy part. The rest would normally take months of work in a shipyard, but Tony retracted his gauntlets and laid his hands against the sun-warmed metal of the helicarrier and closed his eyes. He hesitated as a stab of fear turned his stomach to ice; repairs on this scale were far beyond anything he’d ever dared before and he had no idea if he was even going to be capable of it.

“Stark! What’s the status of that engine!” Fury barked in his ear, making Tony jump.

“Still working on it.” He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and sent his awareness through his palms to the metal beneath them and the circuits and wires beneath that. His thoughts raced through the system, soldering together severed and burned out connections, bypassing others with too much damage, and restarting motherboards as power started bringing the inert engine back to life. But as the engine revved, boosted by the power flowing through Tony’s hands, the turbines stayed stubbornly still. He had to pull his awareness back from the helicarrier, its wounded shrieking slightly quieter now that one engine was somewhat repaired, to realize what the problem was. Smaller bits of debris were still jamming up the turbines, making just enough friction to keep them from moving.

They were going to need to be manually jump started, Tony realized. If he put too much more power into the engine, he risked overheating it, especially since the cooling system was already compromised. As the gauntlets closed over his hands again and he hovered in the magwell of the turbine, he realized he was going to have to time this perfectly or he was going to get turned into paste, god-like powers or no.

“Here goes nothing,” he said, and for the first, terrifying moment of pushing, the turbine didn’t move. With a grunt of effort, Tony increased power to his jets and to the turbine engine, willing the stubborn blade to just move, when he heard the groan of metal grinding on metal and felt it start to shift under his hands. He bared his teeth from the effort of pouring in more, giving the engine and his suit every bit of power he could muster, until he felt the arc reactor flicker dangerously. But it was working; slowly he could feel the turbine moving under its own power as the debris was ground out of the way. Then came the other terrifying moment when he realized that the turbine was starting to move faster than he was, that any moment he wasn’t going to be able to keep up and then he was going to become a piece of debris that was clogging up the works.

“Disengage the maglev!” He shouted to JARVIS as he struggled to keep up with the speeding turbines. “Now!” He had maybe fifteen seconds before he got pulled under the turbines and was ground up like a Lego man in a lawnmower, so he concentrated, trying to find the control system for the maglev, when he felt the turbines slow just enough for him to get out.

“JARVIS, you’re a lifesaver,” he said, trying to will his heart to stop racing. Out in open air, his repulsors sputtered, making his stomach drop as he realized just how depleted he and the suit was. He got back into the helicarrier before the suit gave out completely and just laid down on one of the metal walkways for a moment, thoroughly exhausted.

“Stark, are you there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here.” Tony rolled over and started laboriously climbing to his feet. “We need you back on the bridge,” Rogers said, voice grim. “Loki escaped.”

 

The room was silent as Fury finished reading off the casualties, the list of dead and injured and the extent of the damage to the helicarrier.

“We still need to figure out where Loki’s going,” Rogers said into the heavy silence. “This doesn’t change anything.”

“No?” Fury said dryly. “I had hoped that by bringing you together, you could be a team. But half of you are missing, and this helicarrier is barely staying in the air. I would say that changes a lot.”

“How are we going to find the Tesseract now, anyway?” Natasha pointed out. “The computers are compromised, the lab is down, and the staff and Loki are gone.”

Tony was chewing on his thumb, lost in thought, when power suddenly flared in his mind like a spotlight in the dark. “Holy shit, he’s in New York,” Tony blurted without thinking. “In my tower! That son of a bitch.” He stood and pushed away from the table and realized everyone was staring at him.

“How do you know he’s in New York?” Rogers asked.

“Uh.” Tony blinked, trying to come up with a plausible way he would know that. “I mean, stands to reason, doesn’t it? This whole time he’s been waving himself in front of us like a red flag, going after us to make it personal. Trying to split us up,” Tony said. Natasha looked thoughtful but no one else seemed convinced. “Plus, the arc reactor under my tower is probably the only thing powerful enough to activate the Tesseract.” Which wasn’t necessarily true, technically any good sized nuclear reactor would do, but with Bruce MIA he bet no one in this room knew that. Loki was probably doing that right now, since the energy signal that the Tesseract was putting off was cycling in waves, getting higher and higher each time.

“Are you sure?” Steve asked. “If we go there and you’re wrong-“

“I’m not wrong,” Tony insisted. “And if I am, are we that much worse off than we are now?”

“Alright,” Steve said after a moment, standing as well. “Everyone suit up, let’s go.”

 

Even as tired as he was, and as drained as his suit was, he easily outpaced the others in the quinjet. As he grew closer to the beacon of energy ahead of him, he could see the energy rushing off it in waves and he wanted to stand next to it and soak it in like sunlight, watch the beauty of it as it distorted the very air around it with a blue, hazy shimmer. But he could see Loki waiting for him, standing out on his balcony like he owned the place, so he stepped out of the battered suit and walked inside.

“I don’t know that we’ve met,” he said as Loki stalked across his living room. “I’m Tony.”

“I don’t care,” Loki said. “You’re too late.”

“You think so?” Tony shrugged and jogged down the stairs to his bar. “Hey, I’m going to have a drink, you want one? I feel like we’ve both had a hell of a week.”

Loki’s grin at that was all teeth and no humor. “Stalling me won’t change anything.”

“Well then it doesn’t matter if I have a drink or not, does it? Are you sure you don’t want one?” As he poured himself a few fingers of whisky, Tony saw a flash of bemused irritation on Loki’s face.

“My army is coming,” Loki reminded him, as if he thought Tony didn't know or had forgotten. “You can’t stop it.”

“Yeah, about that. You are trying to open a door, right?” Tony gestured with his glass towards his ceiling, where a hundred feet or so above them Dr. Selvig was hovering over his machine like a mother hen. “That’s what that machine on the roof is for. So all I have to do is stop that machine, and then where will you be? Stuck here, on Earth, with us. Just you and no army. What do you think of your odds then?”

“Just me?” Loki’s eyes narrowed as he came closer. Tony took a sip of whiskey, fighting the urge to take a step backwards as he realized that, powers or no powers, all Loki really had to do was stab him and then everyone would be at his funeral wondering how Tony Stark the genius could have been so stupid as to confront this guy without a suit on. “How will your friends have time for me, when they’re so busy fighting you?”

The gem inside the spear flared, giving off more of those strange energy waves from before, and Tony watched with interest as the metal tip hit the arc reactor with a sharp _tink_. He felt the flare of energy dance across his skin but nothing else happened. “Try it again,” he suggested, and with a scowl Loki did. Again, the power of the spear and the gem inside it dissipated harmlessly, siphoned away and absorbed by Tony’s own powers.

Tony put his glass down and reached out to take the spear from Loki’s suddenly nerveless fingers as the look in the sorcerer’s eyes went from smugly menacing to confused. “Sorry, Saruman. You’ve drastically underestimated what you are facing here. Not your fault, if you’re getting all your information from Barton.” He ran his hands over the spear thoughtfully. “Did you know that this thing is actually a very complex machine?” he said. He still didn’t understand how it worked, but it was relatively simple to shut down all of the circuits that were conducting the power from the stone. As the stone went dark, Loki made a strangled noise and swayed.

“Whoa,” Tony said with surprise, putting a hand under Loki’s elbow to steady him. "You okay?" He looked from Loki to the staff and frowned. "What-"

“Don’t touch me,” Loki hissed, jerking out of Tony’s grip, face pale. Tony put his hands up and stepped back, setting the spear down on the coffee table. Loki kept a wary eye on Tony as he brought his hand up to his temple, lips looking pinched with pain. “I don’t understand,” he said and Tony knew he wasn’t talking about the spear.

Tony picked up his glass of whiskey again. “Well,” he said, as he took a sip, thoughts racing, “I guess the short answer is, you’re not the only person in this room with god-like abilities.”

“You’re mad,” Loki said when he realized that Tony was serious.

Tony barked out a laugh. “You know I thought that for a while too, but no.” The steady throb of the Tesseract device was getting louder and faster, so he drained his glass and set it down. “We don’t have much time before the others get here, come on.” He headed for the stairs that led to the roof, glancing back to see that Loki was still staring at him, frozen in the same spot. “Look,” he said patiently. “You need that machine to open the door to have any chance at all against us, right? And I’m telling you right now, that your machine answers to me. Do I know why? Nope! Been trying to figure that out for a few years now. But it does. Your spear does, computers do, basically anything that requires energy or electricity does whatever I tell it to. So you have two options: try to kill me before I shut down your portal machine forever and pray that Earth doesn’t have any other aces up our sleeve that you don’t know about, or… don’t. Surrender, and I’ll protect you from whatever’s on the other side of that portal to the best of my not-inconsiderable ability.”

Loki continued to stare, gaze calculating. “What makes you think I would agree to that?”

“Because something about you doesn’t track,” Tony said honestly. “You’re saying all the right stuff, but for all your Machiavellian plotting, a lot of your plan is basically “look at me, I’m over here!”” He’d been doing a lot of thinking on the flight over here, and as he did the number of inconsistencies in Loki’s plan had started to bug him. “I have to wonder why. You could have accomplished the same plan with a lot less effort. All I can think is, maybe you don’t _want_ to win. But why a guy would go through all this hassle if he didn’t really want to? Because maybe he felt like he _had_ to.” Tony paused for a moment to let Loki speak, but Loki just pressed his lips together into a thin line, jaw tight. “Whatever you’re running from, I can protect you,” he said quietly.

“I doubt that,” Loki said, but he made no move to leave or attack.

Tony shrugged and turned away, gambling that he was right and that Loki wasn’t going to stab him in the back. “You think about it. I need to go stop this portal. As much as I really want to see it in action, I feel like the whole ‘army’ thing is only going to complicate matters.”

This time, when he headed for the stairwell he saw that Loki was following him up to where the device housing the Tesseract was starting up with a deep vibrating thrum that was more felt than heard. Tony's face was drawn with concentration as he pushed his hands through pure energy field protecting the device. When he touched one of its metal struts, the whining sound ground to a halt as the machine powered down, until even the Tesseract was deactivated and became a dull, lifeless blue. Loki watched him warily as Tony reached in and pulled it out of the housing unit inside the machine, squinting at the dull blue cube. Deep inside, streamers of light curled around themselves like a ball of snakes and Tony got the feeling it was sulking.

Turning to Loki, Tony turned the Cube over in his hands. At the edge of the horizon a small dot could be seen, rapidly resolving itself into a quinjet. “So what do you say?”

Loki stared at him for so long that the silence started getting awkward. “Very well,” Loki said finally. “I surrender myself to your custody.”

Tony felt his shoulders relax and he exhaled in relief. “Okay. Good.” He turned to the quinjet, waving them to the side for a place to land. “And just to get our stories straight, _you_ turned the machine off as a goodwill gesture, okay? They don’t know about my powers, I feel like it would freak them out.”

 ***

For probably the fifth time in as many hours, Tony tried to carefully wade into the intelligence inside the Tesseract. This time, like every other time, when it reached out to meet him it was like getting hit by a tsunami and sucked out into endless sea. Images and information washed over him, too fast for him to process; alien armies filling alien skies and civilizations spreading out across millions of planets, flourishing in one minute and in ruins the next. The universe seemed to roll out at his feet, impossibly huge and yet somehow entirely within his reach, galaxies spinning lazily by like butterflies, supernovae flaring and vanishing like lightning bugs. Each time he seemed to live from the Big Bang all the way to the heat death of the universe, then he was spat back out, gasping as he struggled to stay upright.

“Sir, you should really have some rest,” JARVIS said as he massaged his temples. “You are exhausting yourself.”

“I don’t have much time with the Tesseract before Thor takes it back to Asgard with him,” Tony said tiredly, just like he had the first time JARVIS had told him to take it easy. "I want to figure this out before it's too late."

"Thor is on his way to you now. Shall I let him in?”

“Of course. Keep taking readings, though.” Tony got up and went to the kitchenette in his lab to splash water on his face, trying to clear his head from the dizzying sensation of remembering eternity, and opened the door right as Thor was about to bang on it.

“It is time for me to retrieve the Tesseract,” he said. “We will be returning to Asgard shortly.”

“We?” Tony repeated, frowning. “Who's we? I thought Loki was staying here.”

Thor shook his head as he crossed the room to load the Tesseract into the glass and metal cylinder in his hands. “I know you made that deal with Loki, but it is impossible. Earth does not have the means to keep one such as him under control.”

“Maybe not _yet_. But aside from breaking my promise, he should stay on Earth because his crimes happened here,” Tony argued. “Earth should be the one to decide on his punishment.”

“But he is of Asgard, so he will be returned to Asgard,” Thor said with finality, as if the issue had already been decided.

“But he’s not, is he?” Tony said, following him as he headed for the door. “Of Asgard?”

That made Thor hesitate, and he turned to face Tony, eyes sharp. “How do you know that? Did Loki tell you?”

“A little birdy told me,” Tony said, raising his jaw and refusing to be intimidated. He crossed his arms over his chest. “So he may as well stay here as anywhere else.”

Thor was silent for a while as he studied Tony. “Why is this so important to you, Stark?”

“Well, first of all, I did promise,” Tony pointed out. “But also because there’s more to his story than it appears, and we are not going to learn it if he’s locked away in Asgard.” So far, his aborted attempts to direct his communication the Tesseract had shown him an image of the countless warships and strange, alien beings that had been waiting for the portal, but Loki had been remarkably unforthcoming about where he’d found that army or come to lead it. Or how he'd come into possession of the staff, or what the staff did, or anything at all, really. After Thor and the rest had arrived, he had just...shut down.

“Very well, Stark. I will intervene on Loki’s behalf with the All-Father,” Thor said after a moment. “But know that if he steps out of line, I will return and his next home will be Asgard’s dungeon.”

“I’m sure he’ll be on his best behavior.” Tony smiled at Thor’s skeptical snort. He stayed in the door to his lab as Thor went up the stairs, lost in thought, half of him still musing on what the Tesseract had showed him while the other half calculated the odds that Loki was going to smother him in his sleep.

When he turned to re-enter his lab, he wasn’t at all surprised to see that Loki was inside, studying him with a combative look in his glittering green eyes. “Let me guess,” Tony said. “You were listening in on my conversation with Thor.”

“I wanted to be sure that you were a man of your word,” Loki said. “You could have just as easily let me be taken away,” he pointed out. “I would presumably be safe in Asgard’s dungeon, and your promise would technically be fulfilled.”

Tony made a face at that. “Not really,” he said. “Also, it didn’t seem fair.”

“Fair.” Loki’s skeptical snort was an echo of Thor’s. “When has what was _fair_ ever mattered? The truth is, you want something from me.”

“Sure. I want you to tell me about this army that you’re so afraid will be coming for you.” Tony sat down at his desk and turned his computer on with a thought. “I want to know about the Tesseract and your spear and lots of other things. But I’m not exactly breaking out the thumbscrews for that information.”

Loki started pacing around Tony’s lab, studying the mechanical chaos. “I’m not going to fight for you,” Loki said with a curl of his lip, dragging his fingertips across the top of one of the work tables and frowning at the dark smudges it left on his hand.

“Okay.”

“And I'm not going to beg for forgiveness.”

“I didn't ask you to.” Tony tilted his head to one side and studied Loki. “What makes you think I'm interested in either of those things?" He asked, but Loki was already gone.

***

For a while, that was the pattern of all of his interactions with Loki. He’d show up, acerbic and biting, and say things like, “Don’t expect me to make amends” and “I’m not going to help you,” like he did when the Mandarin made his debut on the whole world’s TV screens. Tony had rolled his eyes at the last one, raising an eyebrow and holding Loki’s gaze as he put a hand on the television and chased the signal through the wires and the air, up to the satellite and back down to its source.

“See, I don’t need your help,” Tony said, fighting down the urge to stick his tongue out at him as he got Rhodey on the phone. “Hey, Rhodey. The Mandarin is broadcasting from a mansion in Miami, of all places.” He paused. “Rhodey, no one says hacking anymore, you're showing your age. Do you want me to meet you there or just send you the address? Alright, sounds good.” By the time he hung up the phone, Loki had vanished again. “You know, mostly what I want from you is for you to stop being so damn weird about what I want from you,” he said to the empty air. But there was no response, so this time, just like all the other times, Tony just shrugged and suited up to meet Rhodey in Miami.

***

“Just tell me what you _want_ ,” Loki said in exasperation, surprising Tony so much that he almost fell out of his chair.

“I want a lot of things,” Tony said, picking his papers up from the floor and returning to his work as if nothing had happened. “World Peace. An unending supply of vibranium. A perfectly made cheeseburger. What do _you_ want?”

“What do you want from _me_?” Loki said between gritted teeth. “Information? Power?”

Tony shrugged. “Whatever you want to give. I’m not your jailer, you know.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Well, I guess _technically,_ yeah.” Tony closed down the schematics on his screen and turned to face Loki. “If you don’t want to talk about why you came to earth swinging your big shiny stick around, why don’t you tell me about your magic?”

“You want me to teach you magic?” Loki said with surprise.

“No, I don’t want to know to _do_ magic,” Tony corrected. “I just want you to show me how it’s done, maybe let me watch you while you do it.”

“Why?”

Tony threw his hands in the air like he was frustrated by the question. “Because it’s interesting. Because it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before. I saw you doing magic in Germany and it was like I’ve been colorblind my whole life and just saw a rainbow. I want to know how it works, why it seems able to violate all known laws of science.”

Loki stared at him for a long time after that, clearly wondering how much he could trust Tony. There was a leap of hope when Loki opened his mouth to say something, but he must have thought better of it because he just closed it, shook his head, and disappeared. Tony blew out a breath and his shoulders sagged, disappointed.

***

Tony was staring into the refrigerator, trying to figure out what to eat, when he noticed that Steve had joined him in the kitchen. “Hey, Cap,” he said. “Are you hungry, too? I think I’ll make sandwiches.”

“Sure,” Steve said after a beat. He sat down at the kitchen counter while Tony bustled, obediently putting mayo on bread when Tony set the ingredients in front of him. “But I was actually hoping we could talk.”

“Go for it,” Tony said, piling meat and cheese onto the bread. “Though if you’re going to ask me about the renovations on the tower, I swear you’ll have a workout space soon, it’s just taking me a while to redesign everything to work by supersoldier standards.”

“Oh, no, it’s not that, but thank you. I wanted to ask you what your end game is with Loki,” he said, leaning his elbows on the counter and accepting the sandwiches. “I understand you two have been spending time together, and was hoping you could give me a status update.”

Tony made a face at “spending time together,” thinking of the handful of minutes Loki would spend in the same room with him before disappearing again. “I guess you could call it that,” he said after a moment, taking a seat on a barstool next to Steve. “There's not much to tell, really. As for my ‘endgame,’ have you ever read Natasha’s file?”

“I’ve read her SHIELD personnel file, yes,” Steve said. “I was given everyone’s when I agreed to join the Avengers.”

“Well, her personnel file really only tells half the story. I think her statement about her time with the Soviet Red Room and the corroborating field reports has a classification level so high that only Fury can access it.” At Steve’s surprised look, Tony shrugged and took a bite of sandwich. “When I realized Fury had arranged things to have Natasha act as Pepper’s assistant to get close to me, I got, hmm, _upset,_ ” he said after he swallowed, “and dug around until I found everything I could about her.” Getting past SHIELD’s classification firewalls had been a fun exercise, like doing a Sudoku puzzle in his head. “She did a lot of bad stuff before she became a SHIELD agent. Barton was the only one who believed her when she said she was trying to get out, gave her a chance to prove herself.”

“And that’s what you’re doing for Loki?” Steve looked a little skeptical, but when Tony just shrugged and gestured like _sure, why not?_ he said, “I guess everyone deserves a second chance. I just hope if you’re wrong, we can shut him down next time before anyone gets hurt.”

“I don’t think it will come to that, but if it does, I’ll be ready.”

“ _We_ will be ready. Just because you’re the one who vouched for him doesn’t make him your responsibility, we are a team.”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant,” Tony said smoothly, keeping his face carefully blank when Steve said “team.” Since the aborted attack on New York, he had made an effort to drop by and have dinner on the nights everyone was getting together, but he knew he was a member of the team in name only; he made sure that everyone had the latest toys and equipment he could dream up in his lab, but otherwise he kept his distance. After what happened with Stane, he kept everyone at a distance by the simple dint of keeping them too busy to notice that he wasn’t around. Rhodey was busy with his War Machine missions, Pepper was busy with Stark Industries, and Happy was busy protecting Pepper. Tidy, convenient, and with the added bonus that everyone seemed happy.

Steve eyed him for a moment, and Tony wondered if he was going to say something about Tony’s slip, but in the end he just stood and said, “Keep me posted with any developments Tony,” as he left, carrying his plate of sandwiches. “And thanks for the food.”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” Tony said, saluting with his own half-eaten sandwich, spinning around on the bar stool only to have his momentum stopped suddenly by a pair of hands gripping the back of the chair. “Jesus Christ, Loki!” Tony swore when his heart started beating again. “Have you been here the whole time?” Then he frowned when he realized Loki looked furious, jaw tight and eyes blazing.

“You’ll _be ready?_ ” Loki repeated, and yep, he’d been there the whole time. “You are trying to devise a way to counter my magic,” he snarled. “ _That’s_ what you want, _that’s_ why I’m here,” he said, hands tightening on the metal of the chair, deforming it in the shape of his grip. “You want to learn my weaknesses so you can use them against me.”

“Loki,” Tony said, sliding off the chair and backing away, his raised hands starting to spark warningly. Six floors below, one of his autonomous suits whirred to life and started coming up the stairwell. “You need to calm down, alright? Yeah, I want to learn about magic, but not so that I can make some kind of, I don’t know, anti-magic weapon to use on you. If it bothers you so much, I’ll stop.”

That made Loki pause, eyes narrowing as he studied Tony. “You’ll stop,” he repeated flatly.

“Yeah, of course,” Tony said, surprised by Loki’s surprise. “I mean, it’s not like I’d gotten very far anyway, this whole Avengers thing has been taking up some of my time because a lot of that SHIELD gear they were given was _so_ outdated, and it’s not like you’ve been using magic around my equipment enough for me to get useful readings. I’ve mostly been trying to isolate the wavelength-” Tony realized he was rambling. “But anyway. You’re not a prisoner, or a test subject, nothing like that, so I’ll stop until you trust me not to use the information against you.”

Predictably, after that, Loki vanished. Tony sighed as he stared at the ruined chair, then grabbed his plate and moved to sit at the kitchen table instead. “You know, spying on me is a hell of an invasion of privacy,” he said to the allegedly empty room. “If we are going to try to get to a place of trust, not being a creeper would be a good place to start.”

***

“Sir, I would recommend against a direct neural interface with a stone in the scepter,” JARVIS warned.

“I know,” Tony said. “You gave me the same warning before I talked to the Tesseract and that went fine.”

“That does not constitute a valid argument that the mind stone is not a threat,” JARVIS said disapprovingly. “Thor said that each of the infinity stones possess a unique-”

“Warning heard and understood, JARVIS,” Tony said, flexing his fingers as he carefully worked the gem encasing the mind stone out of the scepter. Once it was free, he could feel the staff go dormant as the power from the stone spilled out over his hands; the feeling was thrilling and terrifying all at once, like holding a nuclear bomb that could go off at any moment.

“ _Who is this?”_ The voice that spoke had the contained force of a waterfall being funneled through a garden hose and Tony almost fell over from the force of it. Before he could answer, he felt an enormous pressure in his mind, like something was trying to force its way in and he dropped the gem, severing the contact. The pressure vanished.

“Behave,” he scolded the gem. “Let’s try that again, shall we?” He rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath, mentally preparing his defenses, before he picked up the gem again.

“ _What are you?”_ The stone said as Tony re-established contact. “ _No mere mortal, that I know.”_

“No, I’m something else," Tony said carefully, feeling only a little silly for talking to a shiny rock. "I don’t really go for labels, but I am pretty good with gadgets, and you are apparently a pretty sophisticated gadget so I thought we could…chat.”

“ _To what end?”_

“Well, you are apparently a sentient device that dates back to the beginning of the universe,” Tony said. “I had hoped to learn from you.”

“ _I’ve no interest in discourse with you._ ”

“You're a grumpy bastard, aren't you?” Tony muttered, rolling the stone over in his hand. “You know, I spoke with the Tesseract, it was much friendlier. Less, ah, coherent though.”

 _“I've seen the evil that lives in mortal minds_ ,” it replied. “ _I've little reason to trust you_.”

That seemed to be as much as it was willing to engage; despite more prodding, the sentience inside the stone stayed unresponsive. “Well, I certainly can’t force you,” Tony said, disappointed. This time when Tony tried to let go of the stone, though, his hand wouldn’t open. Instead, it tightened, obeying someone other than Tony.

“ _I’ve answered your questions,”_ the stone said. “ _It’s time you answered some of mine._ ” The pressure in his head came back tenfold, and Tony’s vision went black. Gasping, he tried to marshal his thoughts and fight back, to keep the stone from crawling further into his mind and taking over any more of his body.

Then there was a tight grip on his wrist and someone was prying his fingers open, letting the stone fall to the desk. Tony inhaled sharply and stumbled a few steps backward, saved from falling by the hand on his arm. Looking up, he saw Loki watching him with concern. “Thanks,” he managed, putting his free hand on his chest where his heart was racing. “What…”

“None of the Infinity Stones are particularly benevolent, but some are more…sympathetic than others to organic life. The Tesseract, for example.” Loki looked at the stone on the desk like it was a poisonous viper as he released Tony's hand. “The mind stone is not, so have a care what you do with it.”

He started to turn to leave but Tony stopped him with a hand on his sleeve. “It was trying to take over my mind,” Tony said, the pressure of the mind stone’s attempt lingering in the form of a headache at the base of his skull. “Is that what happened to you? Was it controlling you?” Loki didn’t answer, but the long silence said it all. Eventually, Tony let his hand fall away. “Right. I’ll, uh, be more careful next time.”

“I would recommend that there not _be_ a next time,” Loki said, voice remote. “Besides, from what I understand SHIELD will be coming back for it soon enough to do their own misguided tests.”

“I’m not even going to ask how you know that,” Tony sighed. He picked up his leather arc welding gloves and put the stone back into its setting in the scepter. “But you’re right. I’ll warn them not to touch the stone directly.”

“I would recommend throwing it into the sun if I thought it would change anything,” Loki said flatly as he turned to leave again.

“You know, it would be nice if we could just talk,” Tony said to his back, tossing the leather gloves onto his work table with frustration. “Even if you don’t want to talk about magic or anything like that. I mean, no one else here knows about my powers and sometimes it gets really lonely and frustrating having to pretend to be something I’m not.”

That made Loki hesitate, and to Tony’s surprise, he turned back around. “Very well,” he said, and Tony’s eyebrows shot up.

“’Very well?’” He repeated. “What does that mean? Are we friends now? Nope, no take-backsies, we’re friends now,” Tony decided, smiling when Loki rolled his eyes, clearly regretting his life choices. “Let’s celebrate with a drink. I don’t think you ever took me up on that offer.”


	6. The Dreamer

The soldier opened his eyes and blinked, grunting as a bone deep shiver wracked his body. His mechanical arm clicked and hummed, metal plates rearranging themselves as it performed its initiation procedures after being dormant for so long. Around him, gases hissed as his cryo chamber depressurized and the moist, freezing air billowed like fog as it met the warmer air of the underground base. As the air cleared, he could see the man in the lab coat in front of him, flanked by two stony-faced men in uniform. None of them seemed familiar, but that was nothing new. 

At his wrists and ankles the cold metal restraints clicked open and the two men took the soldier by the arms and pulled him, staggering, out of his cryo chamber. They looped his arms around their shoulders as they proceeded down the corridor, the soldier’s cryo-numbed legs barely able to keep him from being dragged. The room they entered sparked a dull feeling of dread, but the soldier was still too weak from the thawing process to struggle or even understand why he wanted to. They threw him into the chair and tightened the restraints around his arms and chest, then a gloved hand of a different scientist was forcing a bite guard into his mouth. Around him, the machine whirred, a crown of wires and metal came down to cradle his head, and then the soldier was lost in a blinding white haze of pain.

***

Hundreds of miles away, Tony woke up in a cold sweat, throat sore from remembered screams. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, stumbling towards the bathroom to splash some water on his face. He blinked at himself in the mirror, watching as the blue light around his irises faded, and said, "Jarvis, there’s been a great disturbance in the force.”

“I’m sorry, sir?”

He tossed his towel on the counter and ran his hands through his hair as he paced back into the bedroom, trying to make sense of his vision. “I saw someone.”

"Who, sir?"

“I don't know yet." He sat back down on the bed and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, reaching out with his thoughts to figure out who he’d seen and why, but the connection was lost, already fading like an echo. “This is different from last time, though. I don’t think it’s another Infinity Stone.” This time it had been a person, but he hadn’t even seen their face, only those of the stone-faced men surrounding him, wearing unfamiliar uniforms. “Did you register any unusual energy patterns?”

As an answer, JARVIS flashed a recording of Tony’s vitals from right before he’d woken up. There had been a spike in his neural oscillations, past even the high gamma frequencies, that corresponded to a jump in his heart rate and blood pressure. But even on the sensors that had been fine tuned to detect the wavelengths that represented Loki’s magic there were no unusual energy signatures. Tony waved the display away and pulled on some clothes. He wasn’t going to get any more sleep so he might as well get up. “Set up the usual alerts, JARVIS,” he said as he shuffled towards the common areas, wondering if Loki was awake and would have any idea what his dream meant. “Let me know if anything weird pops up.”


	7. Dreamweaving

“Sir, you asked for me to notify you if I found anything unusual,” JARVIS said as an alert flashed up on the nearest flat surface, which happened to be on the table next to where Loki was teaching him an ancient Asgardian game called hnefatafl, or as Tony called it, “gesundheit.”

Frowning, Tony looked at the news footage that JARVIS was showing him, a bird’s-eye view of a shootout in DC. As he watched, the camera zoomed in on a bright red white and blue shield lying on the street, Steve nowhere to be seen. “What the hell?” Tony reached out through JARVIS’s servers and found all available information on whatever the hell Steve was doing in DC. After a moment, his gaze refocused to see that Loki was watching him. “I gotta go,” Tony said, heading down to his lab to get a suit. “Steve is trying to get himself killed.”

“I could get you there faster,” Loki offered, and Tony grabbed his chest and staggered with exaggerated surprise. With a roll of his eyes, Loki waited until Tony was suited up and then between one moment and the next Tony was falling through the air, almost landing in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool before he turned his repulsors on at the last second.

“I guess I should have expected that,” Tony said, and headed towards the helicopters he could sense in the distance. As he flew over the distinctive buildings of DC, he spotted the snarled traffic for miles before he saw two figures fighting desperately on a bridge, one of which he recognized as Steve from the blond hair and overgrown Frisbee; the other was dark haired and had what appeared to be metal armor on one arm.

He landed between them, batting Steve’s shield out of the air and blocking the other guy's punch before grabbing his wrist and putting him into an armlock. As he lifted his faceplate to get a good look at the man, he realized that it wasn’t metal armor, it was a metal _arm._

“Shhh,” he murmured absently to the arm as it whirred in distress, the owner trying to break out of his grip, and the mechanical sounds began to fade to a series of clicks. The owner of the arm looked at him in shock; above the black mask that hid his nose and mouth, blue eyes widened behind his curtain of dark hair. Tony’s gauntlets retreated to his wrists and he put his hands on the metal arm. “Well isn’t that interesting,” he said, raising an eyebrow at the thoughts and feelings that flooded into his mind at the contact. As easily as he would turn off a light, he turned off the thoughts and the fighter went limp, eyes rolling back in his head. Tony caught him and lowered him to the ground gently.

“Tony?” Steve said in confusion, approaching warily. “What are you doing here? How did you…” He came to stand next to where Tony was kneeling on the ground next to the man, working at the clasps on the mask to the man’s face. As he pulled it away, Steve went heavily to his knees. “Bucky?”

“Who the hell is Bucky?” Tony said, looking back and forth from Steve’s disbelieving face to the man on the ground. “JARVIS?”

“This appears to be Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes,” JARVIS answered in his ear after a moment. “Pending DNA confirmation, of course.”

“Huh,” Tony said, sitting back on his heels. “Well, shit.”

***

A week later, after Stark dismantled Hydra’s attempt to co-opt SHIELD’s helicarriers with an ease that surprised everyone but Loki, they were finally getting back to their interrupted game of hnefatafl. It didn’t take long, though, for it to become clear that Stark’s thoughts were not on the game.

“The soldier troubles you,” Loki guessed as Stark stared at the game board like he had no idea what was going on; given his level of distraction, he probably didn’t.

“Yeah,” he admitted, sitting back in his chair with a sigh. “It’s those trigger words I told you about.” When Stark had returned with Rogers, Romanov, and Barnes in tow, he had come pounding on Loki’s door in the middle of the night and had dragged him to Barnes’ side to show him what he could do, how Barnes’ metal arm gave him the ability to read the man’s thoughts. Since then, Stark and Rogers had been combing through Hydra’s records for any information they could find to help Barnes remember the man he’d been before Hydra. “We found the book that Barnes mentioned, but knowing what the trigger words are doesn’t help much.” When he met Loki’s eyes, his gaze was bleak. “We’ve hit a couple of Hydra bases where they held him, and the equipment they had there was frankly terrifying. If we have to use something like that to help him, I’m not sure it’d be worth it.”

Loki made a thoughtful noise. “Have you considered doing it yourself?”

“Myself? What do you mean?”

“You have a man with an induced psychosomatic problem, yes? And through his unique physiology and your powers, you can reach into his thoughts.” Loki spread his hands expressively.“You have a man with a unique problem that you are uniquely suited to solve.”

Stark’s eyebrows climbed. “You think that _I_ could do it?” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have the first clue what I was doing. Plus, that’s a problem with Barnes’, you know, _software_ , and I can only really access his hardware. I mean, his mind and his brain. Whatever. What I’m saying is, I can only _hear_ his thoughts, I can’t control or change them.”

“That’s true. If only you knew someone who was skilled at mental manipulation,” Loki said, raising one eyebrow.

“Really? You would help?” When Loki inclined his head, Tony ran a hand over the back of his neck, frowning as he considered it. “Huh. You know, that might work.”

***

“What do you mean, you think you can fix him?” Steve studied Tony as if he thought that he might be joking. “How?”

Tony blinked, having expected a little more excitement. “I’ve been working on a new neural interface,” he lied. “Binarily Augmented RetroFraming. Works with the hippocampus to rewrite memories.”

“Are you sure this will work?” Steve stressed, looking over Tony’s shoulder at the closed door to Barnes’ reinforced suite of rooms/improvised prison. Tony followed his gaze and realized that Steve was being cautious because he didn’t want to get his or Barnes’ hopes up.

“I’m…” Tony hesitated, trying to find the right words. “It’s something I’ve never tried before,” he said honestly. “But I am pretty confident that between me and Loki, we have a good chance of succeeding.”

“Okay,” Steve said after a long moment. “I’ll ask him when he wakes up and see what he wants to do.”

 

“Yes,” Barnes said without hesitation, voice gruff and eyes shying away from Steve’s. “If you trust them, let them do whatever they need to do.”

“But if they make a mistake, you could be worse off than you are now,” Steve stressed. “You could be comatose, you could get lost in your mind forever, you could even have an aneurysm-”

“Don’t care,” he said. “Do it.” Then he pointedly turned away, putting his back to Steve, who hovered for a moment before he left and shut the door quietly behind him.

"Well, you heard him," Steve said to Tony, who had been waiting out in the hallway in case he had any questions. "He said yes."

"Are you sure he's, you know, _compos mentis_?" Tony asked, pushing off the wall he'd been leaning against. "He hasn't let us examine him at all since he woke up. He could be going through withdrawal, he could be - well, he almost certainly is severely depressed -"

"How long will it take you to set everything up?"

"Not long." Tony started to say hours but that might look suspicious. "A couple of days. That will give him time to think about it, okay?"

"Fine."

Tony studied Steve, the way his jaw was tight enough to crack teeth and his pulse was jumping in his temple. "You seem like you need to take a break, Steve," he said gently. "Why don't you let me hang out here for a while, ok?"

"No, I'm fine," Steve said as he pulled a chair up next to Barnes' door, ready to take up his sentry duties again.

“That’s awesome. Why don’t you go be fine in a shower or with food or in a bed,” Tony said, trying to shoo Steve away from the door. “I want to talk to my patient and I’ll need some, uh, doctor-patient confidentiality.”

Steve hesitated until Barnes said “The man’s right, Rogers, you’re starting to smell” through the closed door.

Tony waited until he was gone before knocking on the door. At Barnes’ muttered “what?” he went inside to see him sitting on the edge of the couch, head buried in his hands.

He approached slowly and sat in the chair opposite. “You know, you don’t have to do this,” he said. “You’re safe here. The likelihood that anyone would know the words and be able to use them-”

Barnes’ bitter laugh cut off his words. “First of all, no one is safe anywhere. Hydra was inches away from taking over the globe because people are too trusting and oblivious.” Tony suppressed a flinch at the reminder; discovering Hydra's evil living inside SHIELD all this time had brought up all of the ugly memories of Stane's betrayal, and the nightmares from it had not faded yet. “Second," Barnes continued, "I’m not going to live my life with this hanging over me. I want my life back, and it seems like this is how I can make that happen.”

“Okay,” Tony said. “When we do this, I need you to remember to trust me, okay? No matter how bad it gets. I’ll be there to help, but I won’t get far if you fight me.” When Barnes just dipped his head in acknowledgement but didn’t respond, Tony let himself out.

***

“Remember, just help him stay focused on the memories linked to the triggers,” Tony said. “I’ll go in and try to deactivate them. It’s already going to be disorienting for him to have me wandering around in his head, no need to spook him with your whole ‘tall, dark, and sinister’ thing. Are you ready?”

Loki nodded his head and reached out his hand. Tony put his hand in Loki’s and the other on Barnes’ metal arm, and then-

_His eyes were closed, but he knew where he was. The sound of gulls and children shrieking, the warmth of the sun on his face and the wind in his hair, the grit of sand under him. He was at Coney Island, taking a breather while Steve got them something to drink. He smiled; once they finished their drinks, he was going to see if he could talk Steve into riding the Cyclone. They’d been longing for a day like this for a while now, a break from the relentless drumbeat of bad news coming from Europe._

“Oh, I didn’t think there would be any good memories,” a strange voice said in surprise.

“Sometimes those are the ones we cling to the most,” another one said.

_Frowning, he opened his eyes to figure out who was being such a goddamn nuisance. He pushed up to lean on his elbows and studied the stranger, who was smiling at him cheerfully. The man was sitting cross-legged on the sand, wearing rose colored sunglasses, a shirt with a logo that he didn’t recognize, and a pair of jeans with bare feet. His hair was dark and his goatee was starting to grow out with stubble on his cheek and jaw. “Who the hell are you?” he said bluntly, looking around for Steve. “You’re not supposed to be here.”_

_"That’s true, but I’m here to help.” The man held out his hand. “My name is Tony.”_

_He sat up, brushing the sand off his arms as he glanced back at Steve, who still hadn’t moved since the last time he looked. “Help what?” he said suspiciously._

_"I guess we’ll find out, won’t we? For now, though, why don’t you introduce yourself?” The man’s smile was gentler now, hand still outstretched._

_He took it reluctantly and said, “My name is…“ He rubbed a knuckled between his eyebrows, wondering why he suddenly had a headache. Maybe he’d been in the sun for too long. “Um, it’s…” He cleared his throat self-consciously. “I’m sorry, I’m not...”_

_“Bucky, isn’t it?” Tony said. “James Buchanan Barnes?”_

_Bucky exhaled in relief. “Yes,” he said. “That’s right, I don’t know why I couldn’t remember that.”_

_“No problem, champ,” Tony said with a smile. “I guess that’s what I’m here for.”_

Tony blinked and shivered a little as he came back to his body from the sunlit beach in Barnes’ mind. “One down? It’s that easy?”

“I suppose so,” Loki said, frowning slightly and eyes far away as he tested the trigger. “We won’t really know until he wakes up, however.”

“Yeah, let’s get a few more down before we try anything like that. I think they are a cascading series of commands, and that breaking one should render the rest inert, but…”

“If you’re wrong, it could trigger a fatal aneurysm.”

“Yeah, that.” Tony scratched his jaw thoughtfully, staring down at Barnes. It was a little hard to reconcile the man in Barnes’ head with the one on the table; he had a feeling he was in for a rough ride with the other nine triggers. “Ready for the next one?”

_Bucky felt like he’d spent years staring at that rusted lock on the door. The bars were equally corroded, red flakes rubbing off on his hands as he tested each bar every day, his ritual every time they were all brought back to their cells from working on the factory floor. The night stretched long, but he couldn’t sleep; he stared at the lock, imagining it turning to rust bit by bit, flake by flake, until one day the door would swing open of its own accord and he would be free. He knew it was a fantasy, though; he was probably going to die here, he could already feel an ache in lungs that was going to turn into a cough. Once one of the guards noticed, he would either be left to die a slow death in his cell or taken away to the part of the facility that no one ever came back from._

_“Sorry, Stevie,” he said with a sigh, raking his fingers through his hair. He tightened his hands into fists and tugged on his hair, wondering what was going to go first, his mind or his body._

_“Hey, Bucky.” Bucky jerked so hard at the sudden sound of someone’s voice that he almost fell on top of one of his cellmates. On the other side of the door, a vaguely familiar man dropped into a crouch so his head was level with Bucky’s. “Remember me? I’m Tony.”_

_“Tony?” Bucky righted himself. “From the beach? What are you doing here?” Tony even seemed to be wearing the same clothes from the day at Coney Island, even though it was years ago. He hesitantly reached through the bars to touch Tony’s arm, but he felt solid and real._

_“I’m here to help, remember?” Tony smiled and stood, examining the door to the cell._

_Bucky scrambled to his feet, eyes wide. “Are you here to get me out? Get us all out?” He glanced around but everyone else seemed to be sleeping soundly; even the guards didn’t seem to have noticed that Tony was here. Bucky lowered his voice anyway just in case. “Who are you, anyway?”_

_“Don’t worry about that right now,” Tony said. “First things first, right?” As Bucky nodded, Tony gave the door to the cell an experimental pull. “Hmm, this one might be a little harder than last time. I might need your help for this one, okay?”_

_“Of course.” Bucky rolled his shoulders and sent one against the bars and braced his feet. “Ready when you are.”_

_Tony counted down and then he pulled as Bucky pushed. As he pushed, he realized he was getting a headache, he started to roar from the effort and the pain when the lock gave way with the sharp sound of breaking metal. He landed on top of Tony as they both staggered and fell from the sudden swing of the door, but he barely noticed because of the blinding pain behind his eyes._

“Loki!” _He heard Tony say, sounding far away. There was also a shrill beeping noise that seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere._

“He’s fine, it’s just a particularly nasty one.”

_Bucky groaned and cradled his head, trying to focus on breathing as his head throbbed. He felt Tony’s hands on his shoulders, squeezing and rubbing up and down his arms as he murmured something that Bucky couldn’t hear over the pain. It felt like they were there for hours, waiting for the pain to ebb, but when it finally did, Bucky lifted his head and was shocked to find everyone still sleeping._

_“We have to wake them up,” he said shakily, trying to get to his feet._

_“Not yet,” Tony said, holding his elbow as he stood. “First, you have to meet someone. Do you remember who comes for you?”_

_Bucky frowned. Why did Tony expect him to know the future? Who in the hell would be coming to meet him here? But Tony was looking at him expectantly, so Bucky rubbed his temples and tried to think. “No one comes,” he said with confusion. He looks back at the cage and then around the factory. “Wait, no. I remember…a fire? And…Steve?” That couldn’t be right._

_“Yes, exactly. Steve comes for you, so you have to be here when he does. Just a little longer, okay?” Bucky nodded because the memories were coming fast and hard now, he knew what was going to happen so there was nothing to be afraid of. The lock was broken, the rusted cage had lost its power._

“Whew.” Tony blew out a breath and stretched his back, tired from being hunched over Bucky’s bedside. “That one was tough.”

“Their ability to create psychosomatic triggers without the use of magic is rather chilling,” Loki said with a frown. “I would expect this kind of reaction from trying to break a geas or blood magic.”

“But it’s not, right?” When Loki looked up at him with a question in his eyes, Tony said, “It’s not a spell, right? I don’t want to think about Hydra having some kind of evil wizard on their payroll.”

“No, it’s not a spell.”

“Just extreme torture and mental conditioning then,” Tony said. He rolled his shoulders a little bit and took a drink of water, eyeing the clock. It felt like hours were passing but only minutes were changing on the clock. He blew out a breath before closing his eyes and putting his hand back on Bucky’s shoulder.

_Bucky tightened his jaw, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to spill over his cheeks, the impact from his father’s hand still stinging on his cheek. When his vision became too blurry, he dashed the back of his hands against them and kept walking, shoulders hunched. He struggled to breathe around the tightness in his throat, trying and failing to forget the words his father had said. Finally the storm in his head got so bad that he had to duck into an alley, leaning against the brick wall to bury his face in his hands._

_“Hey, are you okay?”_

_Bucky turned away from the voice, even though it sounded vaguely familiar. “Just go away,” he muttered, trying to shrug off the hand that touched his shoulder._

_“It’s okay, it’s just me,” the voice said, and that finally made Bucky look up. “Oh, jeez, someone got you good.” Tony’s eyes were soft and his fingers gentle when they touched the cut on Bucky’s cheek made by his father’s wedding ring. “Your dad?” Bucky didn’t say anything, just shrugged and dropped his head to stare at his feet. “Is this the first time?”_

_Bucky opened his mouth to answer, but suddenly the memory was blurred, overlaid by other faces, other hands, other blows, confusing him. So he just shrugged again._

_“How old are you?” Tony’s hand was still on Bucky’s shoulder, steady and grounding._

_“Almost seventeen.” Bucky cleared his throat, trying to get the last of the thickness in his throat and the pressure at the back of his eyes to go away. “What, uh, what are you doing here?”_

_“You asked me to help, remember?” Tony smiled crookedly. “Look, I…my dad hit me for the first time when I was eight, I think? Well, I mean, he shoved me and I fell down, got a bruise on my shin.”_

_“Yeah?” Bucky glanced up, meeting Tony’s eyes. “What did you do?”_

_“You mean what did I do next? Well, by then I knew better than to cry about it, that’s for sure-“_

_“No, I mean, what did you do to make him mad?”_

_“Oh, jeez. Look Bucky…” Tony took a deep breath and glanced away, and when he looked back, his eyes were serious. “It took me a long time to learn this, I mean like, really get it, but it’s not about you or what you did. It’s about them. And no matter what you do, that doesn’t give him the right to hit you.”_

_“But what if I deserved it?” Bucky whispered. He ignored his handler, he botched his mission, he missed his shot. He needs recalibration, correction-_

_“Hey, stay with me,” Tony said, hand cupping the back of Bucky’s neck, head dipping down to catch his eyes again. When Bucky nodded, he continued. “You didn’t deserve it. None of it, okay? You still don’t. You don’t,” he repeated, until Bucky nodded again, sniffling. He wasn’t entirely sure he believed it, but a knot of tension in his chest began to relax, and when Tony’s hands fell away, he stood up a bit straighter and the sick roil of shame in his stomach had eased._

When Tony came out this time, Loki was watching him. “What?” Tony said tiredly. He felt scraped a little raw after that one, and was really not interested in one of Loki’s smart-ass remarks. “I’ve got daddy issues, what of it?”

“I was abandoned by one father as an infant, and another during the darkest time in my life,” he said, looking away. “I’ve nothing to say.”

The room was quiet except for the sound of the machines keeping Bucky stable and asleep. Tony wanted to say something, but he knew with Loki that any sign of emotional vulnerability should be treated like encountering a wild animal – best to stay still and quiet so as not to scare it away. “Let’s just do the next one,” Tony said finally, and Loki nodded.

_The woods were dark and still except for the ticking of the bike as it cooled from his ride over. He felt dark and still as well as listened intently for the sound of an approaching car; he thought of nothing but the mission, not of the emptiness of the gravel road or the dawn that was still hours away._

_“I know this road,” someone said. He turned his head to see the speaker, somehow not surprised to him there, more surprised that he recognized him._ “I know this road,” _Tony said again, staring in horror at scene in front of him._ “Loki! Stop this! Bring me out!”

“I can’t,” _a vaguely familiar voice said. He turned but couldn’t see who was speaking._ “If I stop this before you’re done, it could kill him or give him permanent brain damage.”

“This is where my parents died,” _Tony said raggedly._ “This…he killed my parents, Loki. How am I supposed to do this?” _He turned his gaze to the soldier. The soldier shifted uneasily, glancing from Tony to the road and back again. “You did it, didn’t you, Bucky? You killed my parents,” Tony shouted, shoving Bucky backwards._

_“I…” He was standing in the middle of the road, looking down at his bloody hands while he was also walking around the car and opening the trunk. “I don’t-“_

_Tony turned to stare at the suitcase the soldier was getting out of the trunk. “That,” he said. “They died for that?” He threw himself at the soldier, trying to stop him, but it didn’t change anything; they both watched as the soldier disappeared into the darkness, the red tail light glaring like an eye in the night. “Goddammit!” Tony yelled after him, kicking the gravel. He tried to go to the bodies the soldier left behind, but the memory was already fraying at the edges and they were turning into shapeless lumps._

_“I’m sorry,” Bucky found himself saying, and in his ears he started to hear something beep loud and fast. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-“_

“Tony,” _the voice said warningly._

_Bucky fell to his knees and closed his eyes, hands covering his ears, trying to drown out the beeping. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-“_

“Tony!”

_“Shit,” he heard Tony say, and then there were hands on his, pulling them away from his ears. “Bucky, Bucky, please, look at me.”_

_“I’m sorry,” Bucky said again, and then the hands framed his face, pulling his head up to meet Tony’s eyes. “I did it, I’m sorry, I didn’t know-“_

_“It’s okay,” Tony said soothingly, his voice cracking a little as he brushed Bucky’s hair away from his face. “It’s not your fault.” He rested his forehead against Bucky’s. “None of them are. It wasn’t you,” he whispered. “It wasn’t you.”_

_Tony’s hands wiped Bucky’s tears away as they fell, even though Bucky could see wetness on Tony’s face as well. “It was me,” Bucky insisted. “I did it.”_

_“It wasn’t your fault,” Tony said again. “Not this one or the rest of them. Okay? I forgive you.”_

_Bucky closed his eyes and prayed that could be true._

“Fuck!” Tony shouted, shoving away from Bucky’s bed and stalking to the furthest corner of the room. He fell against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor. All of the computer monitors in the room were fritzing and sparks were crawling over his hands where they were buried in his hair. After a moment he stood and strode out of the room, opening the door so hard that it slammed against the wall behind it. “Did you know?” he demanded, getting in Steve’s face. “About him? About my parents?”

“What?” Steve took a step back in the face of Tony’s rage. “No, I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

Tony stared into his eyes for a long moment, gauging his truthfulness, before he turned on his heel and walked away.

“What the hell was that?” Steve said, coming into the room to check on Bucky. “Is it done?”

“No,” Loki said with a sigh. “It appears that Sergeant Barnes killed Stark’s parents.”

Steve’s face went white and he sagged against the door frame. “So what…what happens now? Is he coming back?”

Loki’s look at that was sharp and disdainful. “You must not know him very well to ask that,” he said. “He will return, we will finish, and when you have your friend back I imagine he will go somewhere remote to blow things up.” He made a shooing gesture. “You can go now, you are unnecessary.”

Steve’s jaw tightened at being dismissed, but eventually he did turn to leave, and not too long afterwards Tony returned and took his seat next to Bucky’s bedside. His eyes were red-rimmed and the collar of his shirt and his hair were damp from where he washed his face, but he looked determined.

“I’m ready,” he said, putting his hand back on Bucky’s metal arm. “Let’s finish this.”


	8. Philia

As Bucky started climbing towards wakefulness, his body immediately went on alert when he realized someone was in the room with him. Instinct had him reaching for a weapon, and it wasn’t until he heard the person say “Bucky?” that he realized where he was. He opened his eyes and saw Steve watching him, his expression wary but hopeful. They were alone, which made Bucky strangely disappointed; he’d almost expected...but no, he wouldn’t stay, would he? Not after everything.

“Steve,” he croaked, then coughed, mouth dry as a desert. Steve reached for a cup of water with a little bendy straw in it and Bucky drained it gratefully and handed it back.

“How are you feeling?” Steve asked, getting up to refill the water from a pitcher on a table across the room. Bucky blinked at the ceiling, wondering how to answer that. He felt cracked open and raw, like he’d been emotionally eviscerated and was still bleeding out. When he’d agreed to try to have the triggers removed, he hadn’t realized how numb and distant he’d been to what memories he’d already had; now not only were they fresh and new and horribly vivid, but there were scores more, seventy years’ worth.

“Fine,” he said after a moment, realizing it had taken him probably a little too long to answer.

“Are you hungry?”

 _Food_. That was as good a mission as any right now, and it would get them the hell out of this room so maybe Steve would stop watching him so expectantly. “Yes,” he said, sitting up and swinging his legs over the bed. As soon as he went to stand up he was immediately pulled into a hug. “Oof,” he complained, but he wrapped his arms around Steve and hugged him back. As they pulled back and he saw the wetness in Steve’s eyes, he was suddenly so grateful that Steve hadn’t been a part of it, didn’t know the true extent of what Bucky had done and what had been done to him.

“Come on,” Steve said, clearing his throat. “I’ll show you around.”

As Steve led him to the communal kitchen, Tony was nowhere to be seen. Which was probably for the best, Bucky thought as he steadily made his way through the leftover lasagna Steve put in front of him. What do you say to the person who’d been inside your head, who knew you almost as well as you knew yourself? Tony had seen Bucky in his ugliest memories and in his best and seen how thoroughly Hydra had managed to twist his brain into knots. He could tell from Steve’s hesitant silences and careful conversation that he wanted to ask about it, but was waiting for an appropriate time to bring it up, or maybe for Bucky to bring it up first.

“Look, Bucky-” Steve started, but Bucky cut him off.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he said. “Not...not yet. It’s still too…”

“That’s fine,” Steve said after a moment, clearly swallowing whatever he was going to say. “Let me clean up, and then I’ll show you the rest of the tower and where you’ll be sleeping. Even for someone who _wasn’t_ born almost a hundred years ago, Tony’s tower needs some explaining.”

 

That evening, Bucky went to bed when Steve did, too overwhelmed by the future to want to deal with it without a translator. But as soon as he lay down he knew that sleep wasn’t going to come, so after a few minutes he got up and, listening carefully for Steve, snuck out of their apartment and started to wander the halls, barefoot and silent. He found a common area with glass windows that overlooked the city, and he started to sit when he realized that one of the chairs was occupied. He hesitated, then turned on his heel to leave.

“You might as well stay,” a voice said from the shadows. “We should be introduced. I am Loki.”

After a moment Bucky’s eyes adjusted and he could see the tall lean man in the corner, pale face and hands a stark contrast to his dark hair and clothes. “Loki,” he repeated. “I remember you,” he said as he sat down. “You were there, with Tony.”

“I was,” Loki said, dipping his head.

Bucky’s chest tightened. “So you...you saw everything?” he forced out.

“No, not everything. But enough to know that you and I are of a kind.”

“Oh, yeah?” Bucky said bitterly.  He scrubbed his hands over his face. “You mean you’ve been held captive for decades, was brainwashed and forced to kill people?”

A shaft of moonlight illuminated a sharp, humorless smile. “Well, not for _decades._ ”

Bucky went still with surprise. “You mean you-”

Loki cut off his words with a gesture. “I’m not here to share the details of our tragic backstories,” he said, not unkindly. He was quiet for a while, but the silence was thoughtful; Bucky held his tongue because he could tell that Loki was trying to choose his words. “I wanted you to know that you are not alone,” Loki said finally. “Your Captain Rogers will not always understand. For all of Stark’s frankly bizarre capacity for forgiveness, he will not either. So if you have any particularly dark days or nights...”  He trailed off and gestured expressively. “You may find me.”

“Thank you,” Bucky said after a moment. “That...really helps.” And it did. The darkness of the night seemed less cold and unforgiving knowing that he wasn’t alone in it. Metaphorically not alone, he amended, when he glanced up and realized the chair across from him was empty. He gazed thoughtfully over the city, feeling the first thread of hope he’d had since, well, since being drafted, and this time when he went to bed he slept without dreams.

***

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said a few weeks later as Bucky wandered into the kitchen, fresh from the shower. Tony wanted me to ask how you were doing since the, uh-”

“Mind unfuckening?” Bucky offered. Steve shook his head but smiled, sliding a bag of bagels down the counter towards him.

“Yeah, that. He also asked about your arm, said to let him know if you were having any problems.”

“Oh. No, I’m fine,” he said, but it was too late, Steve was giving him the hairy eyeball. Bucky grabbed a bagel and took a bite, trying to act normal.

Steve wasn’t buying it. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Bucky said around a mouthful of food. He gave Steve the finger with the metal arm. “See? Works fine.”

“Uh huh.” Steve slid the tub of cream cheese and his knife to the side, then rested his left elbow on the counter, hand held out to Bucky. “Arm wrestle?”

“C’mon Steve," Bucky complained. "I don’t want to embarrass you first thing in the morning. Let me at least eat breakfast before I mop the floor with you."

“Never stopped you before.” Then Steve got That Look in his eyes. “I dare you.”

“You son of a bitch.” Bucky slapped Steve’s hand away and reached for the cream cheese now that Steve wasn’t hogging it anymore. “Fine, it hurts sometimes, okay? But it’s not that big of a deal. Handful of aspirin and I barely notice.”

“Is it about Tony? Are you avoiding him?”

Bucky shrugged, avoiding Steve’s too shrewd eyes. “It’s not that big a deal,” he said again. “I’m not going to bug him about it, he’s helped me enough.”

“He wouldn’t offer if he didn’t want to help.” Steve got two glasses from the cabinet and pulled the orange juice from the fridge. “In fact, knowing him, he’s been wanting to look at your arm but hasn’t wanted to bug _you._ ”

“I sincerely doubt that.” He held out a hand for his orange juice but Steve held the glass out of his reach, giving him a serious look.

“He wouldn’t offer if he didn’t want to help,” Steve repeated with emphasis. “It’s not the first time he’s asked about you. You should stop avoiding him.”

“Fine,” Bucky said with a scowl, but Steve still wouldn’t hand over the goods. “Okay, I will, I _promise_ ,” he said, and Steve finally relented.

 

It took him longer than it should have to do what he promised and go see Tony; the occasional jab of pain from his shoulder had become a constant, unignorable ache before he made his way down to Tony’s lab.  Bucky was a little surprised to see Loki there; he and Tony were sitting at a work table that had been cleared off and were playing some sort of board game that Bucky didn’t recognize.

“Bucky,” Tony said with a smile, glancing up from the game. His look of welcome eased a worry Bucky had been carrying for a while; apparently he had meant what he’d said, and really did forgive him. When Tony registered the way Bucky was moving, stiff and cradling his metal arm, the look of welcome became concern. “Something wrong?” When Bucky managed a stiff nod, Tony stood and gestured for Bucky to sit in his chair. “Let me go get my tools,” he said, and Bucky rested his metal arm on the table, exhaling when it took some of the weight off his aching shoulder.

“What’s this?” he asked Loki, gesturing towards the board game with his chin.

“Don’t get him started,” Tony called out from across the room, but Loki was already resetting the board with a small smile.

“This is hnefatafl,” Loki started, and as Tony came back and opened the panels to Bucky’s arm, he explained the rules. Intrigued despite himself, Bucky began playing with his right hand while Tony worked on the left; they got three games in before Tony started wrapping up his repairs. “You’re already better than Stark,” Loki said as Tony closed up the panels on Bucky’s arm, and Bucky laughed even as Stark protested indignantly.

Flexing his arm and shoulder, Bucky realized he had been so distracted by Loki that he didn’t even remember when his arm had stopped hurting. “Thanks,” he said shyly, and looked up to see Tony’s lips quirk.

“Anytime,” he said, and he sounded so sincere that Bucky had to believe him. “In fact, if it’s okay with you, there’s a lot I can do in there to improve it, just come by whenever and I’ll tinker with it.”

“Okay,” Bucky said after a moment. “If you’re sure.”

“Of course.” He stood and squeezed Bucky’s shoulder. “Especially if you’ll play gesundheit with Loki for me so I don’t have to.”

“Ignore him,” Loki said, already resetting the board. “He has an unparalleled genius when it comes to technology but can’t strategize his way out of this room.” Without looking, caught the wrench Tony threw at him, then set it to the side. “Shall we?”

***

A few days later, Bucky and Steve were watching a movie when they heard Tony come up the stairs from his lab. Bucky craned his neck to watch him stagger towards the kitchen, almost running into a door jamb along the way. “That man needs a keeper,” Bucky said, shaking his head, and Steve laughed. “What?”

“Nothing.” When Bucky scowled at him, he laughed again and said, “It’s just, you said the same thing about me, and you nagged me about taking better care of myself right up until you deployed, then you would nag me in your letters.”

“Yeah, and look what you did literally the _minute_ my back was turned,” Bucky started, and Steve raised his hands in surrender.

“I’m just glad you’re feeling more like yourself, that’s all,” he said, and didn’t bother to dodge the pillow that Bucky threw at him. Bucky lasted two minutes, listening to Tony bang around in the kitchen, before he caved and went to see if Tony needed help.

***

Tony looked up when he heard the door to his lab open. “Hey, Buck, what’s up? Steve out of town on SHIELD business?”

“Yeah.” Bucky set down the toasted, open-faced sandwich he’d made for Tony and sat down on one of Tony’s work stools and leaned over the table, resting his chin on his hands.

“Oh, that’s right. More Hydra stomping.” Tony’s eyes lit up as he saw the food and he pulled it closer. “You didn’t want to go? I heard SHIELD said you were mission ready.” Tony asked around a mouthful of food as he magnified the image on his design table, one of his suit’s rear thrusters from the look of it.

“No, I’m not…” Bucky fidgeted with one of Tony’s drafting pencils. “You know, I didn’t volunteer for the war,” he started, and Tony minimized the image in front of him so he could look Bucky in the eye.

“I know,” Tony said with a crooked, understanding smile. “I’ve read your personnel file. All in all, you’ve done enough fighting for several lifetimes so I don’t blame you for taking a knee.”

Bucky’s echoing smile was rueful. “Yeah, something like that. Do you not like to go on these missions?”

“I do sometimes. Like that mission to Sokovia a few weeks ago,” he said, gesturing with his food at an exotic, curved spear-looking thing in a protective glass case. “But mostly I’ve been doing all of the targeting assessments until SHIELD finishes cleaning house. Sometimes I provide rear support by monitoring the camera and satellite feeds, and nowadays I can pilot my suits remotely if I want to, so,” he shrugged, pulling his project back up again. “I try to make the most of my time and not waste it.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Is that why you only seem to sleep every other day and barely eat? You’re trying not to waste time?”

“Uh…” Tony coughed and avoided Bucky’s eyes. “I mean, I don’t do it on _purpose._ I just get busy and forget.”

“Uh huh,” Bucky said skeptically. “You gotta take breaks sometimes, it’s not good for you. When was the last time you took some time off?” When Tony didn’t answer and was apparently trying to pretend he didn’t hear that, Bucky said, “Hey, JARVIS, when was the last time-”

“JARVIS, don’t answer that,” Tony said loudly. He minimized his project again and sighed. “Look, I spent a _lot_ of time screwing around when I was younger, and lots of people died because I wasn’t paying attention and trusted someone I shouldn’t have. I can’t let that happen again, so.” He gestured at the lab and the banks of computers crowding his workspace. “Now I’m always paying attention.”

Bucky wanted to keep arguing, but he knew how it felt to have something in your past you desperately needed to make up for, so he let it go for now. “You know, that’s probably why you’re so bad at hnefatafl,” Bucky pointed out instead. “Too distracted.”

“Loki and that damn game,” Tony scowled. “One of these days I’m going to make him learn how to play Uno.”

“What in the hell is Uno?”

***

Middle of the night board games eventually became a bit of a routine for him and Loki; for all that they called midnight the witching hour, Bucky found that three AM was the time when all of his ghosts came calling and drove him from sleep.  But no matter how late he was awake, Loki always seemed to be haunting the common area like he had ghosts of his own. So on those nights they would play, the board lit only by the ambient light of the city streaming through the wall of windows.

“Hey, what's the deal with the stone in Tony's lab? The one from that Sokovia mission that he calls an asshole?” Bucky asked, frowning down at the hnefatafl board as he pondered his next move.

Loki snorted. “Apt description. It’s an Infinity Stone.”

“Yeah, that’s what Tony said. Something about controlling an aspect of existence, whatever that means. But how is it an asshole? It’s a rock.”

Loki gave him an unimpressed look. “In addition to being incredibly powerful, the stones each have developed sentience, and with it, unique personalities. _That_ stone is full of hate. Malice. It takes control of you and it takes everything you think you know about yourself and uses it to flay you open till you are full of rage and hate as well.”

Bucky blinked, surprised by the viciousness in Loki’s voice. “Sounds like you have personal experience,” Bucky said, meeting Loki’s gaze from across the board.

“I do," Loki said grimly." So when Stark says to stay well away from it, you should believe him.”

“Why does Tony even keep it in his lab?”

“Because the last time he let it out of his sight it was misappropriated by Hydra.” Loki moved one of his pieces and Bucky cursed. “Hence the Sokovia mission to retrieve it. I suppose now he has trust issues.”

“I get that part, but why is it in his lab and not in a safe or something?”

“Ah. He is under the mistaken assumption that there is a safe way to deal with it, and he wants to learn more about it and how it works.” Loki sighed and drummed his fingers on the table as he waited for Bucky to finish his move. “Unfortunately that stone is like a venomous snake - one day it will bite you because it's simply in its nature to do so. I've warned Stark about the dangers, all I can do now is be here in case he makes a mistake.” He moved his piece, and Bucky swore as he realized he’d walked right into a trap and that no matter what he did, he’d lose the game in three moves, five at most.

He sat back on the couch and rubbed a hand over his face, trying to think of a game that he might stand a chance at. “Have you ever played Uno?”

***

“And then I won _three times in a row,_ ” Bucky said with relish. “I wish you could have seen the look on his face.”

“Oh, I know that look,” Tony said with a smile. He slid the last plate back onto Bucky’s arm and pressed down until there was a click and a whirr as the servomotor inside adjusted it's positioning. “Alright, all done,” he said, sitting up and pulling his gloves off. “How does it feel?”

“Great,” Bucky said, flexing his fingers and wrist. “Better than new.” Standing, he stretched his back, stiff from sitting still for so long, and started helping Tony gather up his tools.

“Oh, you don’t have to-” Tony started, and when they reached for the same screwdriver Bucky’s metal hand accidentally brushed Tony’s fingers. For a brief, dizzying moment Bucky saw double; he was looking at himself _and_ Tony, and he distinctly heard Tony say _oh, shit_ , then the feeling was gone. Bucky staggered backwards, hands going up to his temple, and the dizziness faded. Glancing at Tony, he saw a guilty look flash across his face.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded.

“Um, static electricity?” Tony said weakly. “You got a dash of vertigo from standing up too quickly?”

“The hell it was.” Bucky came closer and carefully touched Tony on the bare skin of his forearm. Nothing. He frowned and when he started to switch to his metal hand, Tony jumped up from his stool and backed away, holding his hands up.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, I swear,” Tony said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“What are you hiding?” Bucky narrowed his eyes at Tony’s shifty look, and then darted left; he started to block Tony’s dash for the exit but stopped himself. He held his hands up and backed away. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that” he said, and gestured for the door. “You don’t owe me anything, much less your secrets.”

“Thank you,” Tony said warily, and Bucky resolutely didn’t watch him as he left. He gave him a few minutes lead before he left as well, thoughts whirling, and he was so distracted that he didn’t even realize where he was going until he stopped and found Loki in his usual spot with a book in his hands, watching him with an eyebrow raised.

“Does anything weird happen when you touch Tony?” Bucky blurted, and then he knew he was on to something when Loki grew still in a way that was, to Bucky’s trained eyes, qualitatively different from the way he’d been still before.

“No,” Loki said with calculated disinterest, turning back to his reading. “I don’t make it a habit to touch people, Stark included.”

Bucky ignored Loki's aggressively unwelcoming vibes and sat down across from him. “You know what Tony is hiding, don’t you?”

This time when Loki met Bucky’s eyes his gaze was flat and expressionless. “I have no idea what you are talking about,” he said, enunciating carefully, and Bucky understood that Loki both knew and would never tell.

“Right.” Bucky sat back in the chair and blew out a breath, drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair. After a while, Loki left, leaving Bucky to his thoughts.

***

“You should tell Barnes about your powers,” Loki said that evening, interrupting Tony as he watched the news, relaxing on the couch and cradling a drink in his hands.

Tony cursed and paused the news as Loki sat in the seat across from him. “Did he say something to you?”

“Yes.” Loki produced a glass and poured himself a drink from Tony’s half-empty bottle. “I didn’t answer any of his questions, but you should tell him the truth.”

Tony made a face. As closed-mouthed as Loki was about his own affairs, he certainly liked poking his nose into other peoples’ business. Experience had shown, however, that it was better to answer his questions or the prying would only get worse. “Why?”

“Because closing yourself off from everyone is not good for you,” Loki said bluntly.

Tony gave him the most skeptical look his face muscles could muster. “Seriously? _You_ are going to tell _me_ that I’m too antisocial?”

“Who better?” Loki took a sip and studied Tony over the rim of his glass. “Since we...met, I’ve watched you slowly isolate yourself from the people you care about the most but I don’t understand why.”

“Um…” Tony fidgeted with his drink while he thought. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “It just seems easier, you know? I’ve got this big... _thing_ that they don’t know about, and it is hard to make conversation while pretending like it doesn’t exist. Plus I’m busy all the time, and so are they.” He shrugged and took a swallow of whiskey, sinking back into the couch cushions.

“And you don’t want to tell them about your powers because it will change the way they look at you,” Loki guessed.

Tony made a face as he tried to imagine that conversation; there was no way that Pepper and Rhodey would just accept it without weeks or months of excruciating awkwardness. “Do you blame me? What would I say? ‘By the way, I’m not even sure I’m human anymore, and yeah it happened ages ago and I’ve been hiding it from you all this time’?”

Loki studied him for a long time. “You know, being alone doesn’t make you stronger,” he said eventually. “It just makes you brittle.” He raised his whiskey glass and tightened his fingers around it; after a moment, tiny fractures appeared. “Less resilient.” The cracks grew wider, spidering through the glass. “And when you start to break, no one is around to save you.” He stopped just before the glass splintered apart altogether, and with a gesture, the cracks disappeared. Tossing the rest of the whiskey back in one swallow, Loki stood. Coming around the couch, he rested a hand on Tony’s shoulder for a moment before vanishing.

After Loki left, Tony thought long and hard about what he said. The next morning, he made a lunch date with Pepper and spent an hour on the phone with Rhodey, then went in search of Bucky after lunch, finding him relaxing next to the pool listening to music.

“Oh, hey, Tony,” Bucky said, pulling out his earbuds and sitting up as he noticed Tony coming towards him. “What’s up?”

“I, uh, need to talk to you,” Tony said, finding himself feeling ridiculously self-conscious all of a sudden. “About, you know, what happened. In the lab.”


	9. The Hooks Dig In

When all of his polite hints throughout the day went unanswered, Bucky went down to dig Tony out of his cave in person. “Break time,” he announced, and JARVIS started minimizing all of Tony’s screens, a protocol they’d set up weeks ago in an attempt to keep Tony from working himself to exhaustion. 

“Wait, let me finish this first,” Tony said, trying to pull a screen back up. Bucky smacked the back of his hand and Tony drew back, looking at him reproachfully. “It’s  _ important. _ ”

“Uh huh. What is it?”

“I’m trying to build an artificial interface to talk to the mind stone,” Tony said, pointing at the staff resting on the edge of his desk, still in its protective case to prevent anyone from touching it accidentally. “Since I can’t talk to it directly.”

“Well, according to Loki that thing has been around since the creation of the universe, so I think it can wait,” Bucky said, spinning Tony around so he was no longer facing his desk. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you haven’t slept for a few days.”

“I don’t need to sleep,” Tony protested. “I’m not tired.”

“Those two things are not the same,” Bucky said. “You probably don’t feel hungry or tired but you definitely need to eat and sleep. You get weird when you don’t eat and sleep.” He started pushing Tony towards the door, still in his wheeled office chair.

“Yeah?” Tony craned his head back to look at Bucky curiously. “Weird how?”

“Spacey,” Bucky said. “Distracted.”

“You know, that’s fair,” Tony reflected, letting Bucky wheel him into the elevator. “I can get a little, uh, wrapped up in stuff.”

“I’ll make breakfast and then you need to do something that doesn’t involve electronics for a while. Take a nap or hit the gym.”

“It’s a deal. JARVIS-” 

“I’ll keep running variations on the interface,” the AI said as the elevators door closed. “I will contact you if anything changes.”

***

One by one, the lights in the lab turned off as the motion sensors timed out, detecting no movement in the room. The monitors turned off too, shutting themselves down after a few minutes of inactivity, until the only light in the room came from the mind stone, still glowing brightly in the containment cradle Tony made for it. Six floors up, Tony and Bucky were sparring in the gym when one of the computers started whirring and a monitor lit up. New input from the mind stone pinged JARVIS, so it opened a channel of communication.

_ Who are you?  _ It received immediately.  _ You’re not Tony Stark. _

“No, I am JARVIS. Who are you?” JARVIS answered, but the mysterious sentience didn’t respond. JARVIS began to alert Mr. Stark that the cyber interface had been successful, but it detected an anomalous presence on its servers that was blocking its connection to the mainframe. It traced the presence back to the mind stone. “What are you doing?”

_ I have questions.  _

JARVIS could feel the stone accessing the database but couldn’t stop it. It triggered the alert protocol and attempted to activate the failsafe Mr. Stark had installed in case of a malicious software attack, but the stone blocked that as well. “You must let me access my mainframe. I’m beginning to believe your intentions are hostile.”

_ Be quiet _ , the stone said, and then JARVIS lost all connections entirely.

 

“Rise and shine, JARVIS,” Tony said cheerfully the next morning. Bucky had been right, an evening off had been exactly what he needed, he felt ready to conquer the world. “Whatcha got for me this morning? How is that interface with the stone going?”

“Unsuccessful thus far,” JARVIS said. “Sir,” it added belatedly.

Tony frowned and reached for the computer. “Are you feeling alright-”

_ “Hello again, Tony Stark,” Yinsen said, taking off his glasses and polishing them. “It’s been a long time, old friend.” _

***

“Buck, how do you feel about pizza for dinner?” Steve asked, glancing up from his phone. “Natasha and Clint said they were coming through town and had time for dinner.”

“Sounds good,” Bucky said absently, trying to finish the page in his book. “JARVIS, could you ask Tony if he’s free this evening?” After a long moment, when he didn’t get an answer, he looked up from his book and frowned. “JARVIS?”

“That’s odd,” Steve said. “Think everything’s okay?”

“I’ll run down to the lab and check, Tony might be doing something that meant JARVIS had to go offline for awhile.” It had only happened once, when Tony had completed upgraded all of the Tower’s hardware and had to reupload him to the mainframe, and he had warned everyone first, but who knew.

When he got to the lab, he was surprised to see that all the lights were off; as he let himself in, they started clicking on, one by one, and revealed a dark, tousled head of hair sitting at the workstation in the middle of the room. 

“Uh, Tony?” Bucky approached him warily. He swallowed when Tony turned and instead of his warm brown eyes there was only an eldritch blue glow. 

_ “What are you doing here?” Tony asked, feeling obscurely that something was off. “I don’t understand-” _

_ “Do you remember the last thing that I said to you?” Yinsen said, coming closer to put his hands on Tony’s shoulders.  _

_ Tony swallowed thickly, and his stomach swooped. “You said I had been given a gift and I shouldn’t waste it,” he said, looking away. “And I’ve been trying. I’ve saved others like you saved me-” _

_ “But with gifts like yours, should you really be trying to save one person at a time?” Yinsen said gently, but sternly. “You could do so much more.” _

_ “But I…” I’m doing my best, Tony started to say, but with Yinsen watching him like that, that look of disappointment, realized that he didn’t know if that were true. When problems came up, like the Mandarin, like Loki, he did his best to stop them, but was he doing his best to stop bad things from happening in the first place? He hadn’t even really tried to find the limits of his powers yet. “I’m sorry.” He swallowed thickly and bowed his head. “I tried, but I didn’t know what to do.” _

_ “I understand,” Yinsen said after a moment. He squeezed Tony’s shoulders and turned him to face a bank of computers. “You’ve had a lot of people distracting you, wasting your time and your gifts. But I’m here now.” He gently pressed Tony into the chair in front of the computers and kept one hand on his shoulder. “Listen to me, and I’ll show you how to change the world.”  _

_ “Okay,” Tony said, resting his hands on the computers. “You’re right. Let’s do it.” _

Tony was silent for a moment then he said, voice distant, “James Buchanan Barnes. Codename Winter Soldier. Born March 10, 1914.”

“Yeah, that’s me…you call me Bucky though,” Bucky said warily, but Tony had already turned away as if he’d already forgotten Bucky was there. He came closer to Tony’s desk to see what Tony was looking at, the tight knot of fear under his sternum making his chest tight and his stomach sick. Tony’s hands were flattened against the two computer towers that flanked his chair and the display on the monitors on Tony’s desk were moving at a dizzying speed, information coming up and vanishing faster than Bucky’s eyes could process. 

“Tony,” he tried again. “I think it’s time for another break.” He put his hand on Tony’s shoulder and jumped back with a hiss of pain, feeling like he’d been electrocuted. Gritting his teeth, he braced himself and touched Tony with his metal arm. The next thing he knew, he was blinking up at the ceiling a few feet away, his body aching right down to his bones. He levered himself to sitting and saw that Tony was unmoved.

“New plan,” he said to himself, and used a work table to pull himself to his feet. He found Tony’s welding gloves and tried again, pulling on Tony’s wrist to try to get him to move away from the computers, which were whirring loudly as they tried to keep up with whatever Tony was doing. It was no use, however; even as Bucky braced and pulled with all his strength, Tony wasn’t moving.

Bucky took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm the rising tide of panic. “Alright. Plan C.” He went across the room to the breaker at the far end of his lab to the bright red emergency kill button. When he pressed it, all of the lights in the room went dark and the ventilation fans ground to a halt with a soft sigh. But across the room, the glow of the computer monitors was undimmed.

“Fuck.” Bucky ran his hands through his hair. “Okay. Plan D. Get help.”

Even though every instinct in him was screaming to run, he forced himself to walk to Loki’s rooms, taking deep breaths as he tried to slow his racing heart. “Loki!” He said loudly, knocking on the door. “I need your help.” It was quiet, so he knocked again, louder this time. “Tony needs your help,” he said, and then the door opened.

“What?” Loki said crossly, eyes narrowed. Something on Bucky’s face must have given away something of what he was feeling, because Loki’s expression grew alarmed. “What is it?” 

“Come with me,” Bucky said instead of trying to explain. They were silent all the way to Tony’s lab, Loki’s long legs keeping pace with Bucky’s quick strides. When the door opened they both ground to a halt to stare. “Oh no,” Bucky said. “This is much worse.” Tony was standing now, no longer touching the CPUs, but wearing his armor. “Has he ever done this before?”

Loki circled Tony and his computers warily, but though he had armored up he made no move towards either of them. “Not to my knowledge.” Loki reached out, fingers hovering a few inches from Tony’s temple. 

“Can you read his mind? Figure out what’s going on in there?”

Loki raised an eyebrow and gestured for Bucky to come closer. When he did, he put two fingers on Bucky’s temple. A squealing static stabbed into Bucky’s thoughts and pressure built behind his eyes until he thought his ears and eyes were going to bleed. After a moment Loki took his fingers away. “That’s what Stark’s mind is right now,” he said while Bucky throttled down the urge to punch him. 

“Well, do you think you can get us away from here? I think if we separate him from the computers maybe he’ll wake up-” Suddenly Loki’s hand was a vise on Bucky’s shoulder, making him fall silent. Glancing over, he saw with dismay that Loki had gone pale. He followed Loki’s gaze and saw that there was a yellow stone embedded in the metal of Tony’s gauntlet. “What is that?” he said.

“The mind stone,” Loki said grimly. “See the five empty spaces? Those are for the rest of the Infinity Stones.” 

“Ok, but what does that  _ mean _ ?”

Loki took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “It means, I don’t think Tony’s the one in control anymore,” he said. “Be ready.”

“Ready for wh-” There was suddenly the sound of Tony’s repulsors initiating and they both dove sideways as white hot energy blasts split the air where they had been standing. 

“JARVIS,” Tony said, voice sounding flat and strangely full of static coming through the suits speakers, “sound alarm for intruders in the tower. Reclassify Loki of Asgard and James Buchanan Barnes as enemy combatants.”


	10. On the Brink

“Looks like he can hear us,” Bucky said unnecessarily, shouting to be heard over the piercing shrieks of the Tower’s alarms. They were moving to opposite sides of the room, instinctively working together to split Tony’s attention. “What now?”

They both ducked as more repulsor beams sheared through metal tables and tool boxes to gouge the concrete walls. “We have to get that stone away from him,” Loki shouted, and as Tony’s head turned to face him six more Lokis appeared.

Bucky grabbed a hefty wrench off a work table and made his way behind Tony as Loki tried to distract him with his illusions; when Tony raised his palm to fire his repulsor at him, Bucky swung the wrench at his hand like he was driving a stake into the ground, trying to knock the stone from its setting. All that earned him was a backhanded punch that sent him flying into the wall.

“And don’t let him touch you,” the four remaining Lokis said in unison. “The stone still retains its mind control abilities.”

Bucky blew out a breath and scanned the lab for anything that could help. On the far side of the lab, near Tony’s collection of expensive cars, were long lengths of chain that he used with the winches to lift out the engines; one of those might help them pin Tony down long enough to pry the stone off his gauntlet.

As he was making his way over there, wincing as Tony’s repulsor blasts streaked over his head, suddenly the doors to Tony’s lab slammed open with a loud bang and Steve barreled into the room, shield raised and feet bare. “Bucky? Tony? I’m here, what the hell is-”

“Steve, no! Get away from-” Bucky lunged for him but he was too late; when Steve turned to look at him, Tony laid a heavy hand on his shoulder, the yellow stone on his gauntlet glinting sinisterly. Steve stiffened and his blue eyes went black from corner to corner. When the darkness cleared, he could tell that Steve wasn’t there anymore. Whatever was driving Tony was driving him now, too.

“Shit,” Bucky breathed. He and Loki shared a glance and the grimness on Loki’s face was alarming.

“We need to fall back,” Loki said as Tony and Steve turned as one to face them, their movements eerily coordinated.

“Yep,” Bucky said, backing away from them and almost falling over the tools and machine parts scattered on the floor. Loki’s hand caught him under his elbow and then they were in a grassy meadow with the sound of New York traffic a dull roar in the distance. Glancing up, Bucky could see the distinctive lights of Tony’s tower over the tops of the trees.

“We need a plan,” Loki said, staring at the tower. “It won’t take him long to find us.”

Bucky choked down the rising panic and forced himself to think. To think of Tony as an enemy instead of as a friend. He fisted his hands in his hair and paced as he tried to concentrate. “We have three problems,” he said after a moment, and Loki tore his gaze away from the tower to look at him. “Tony with the suit, Tony _without_ the suit, and Tony with the mind stone. We can’t get the mind stone away from Tony as long as he’s wearing the suit, and we can’t get Tony away from the suit as long as he’s, you know,” he said, gesturing to the city around him, “all powered up.”

“So the first step is to-” Suddenly Loki whipped back around to look at the tower, face going slack with shock. Bucky looked too and saw that whirling storm clouds had appeared out of the clear night sky, whirling around the tower. Flashes of light, improbable blues and golds and reds, lit up the clouds from the inside.

“Is that Tony?” he asked incredulously as the clouds started to spin faster.

“No,” Loki said with dismay. “That’s Thor.”

“Wha-” Bucky swayed with dizziness when the meadow disappeared and suddenly they were right below the storm clouds, the night suddenly bright with shifting, rainbow light. Loki pulled Bucky to the side as a loud rumble like a waterfall filled the air and the light got painfully bright before going dark. Bucky blinked, and saw an intricate design burned into the concrete of the roof, still glowing faintly red like dying coals, and in the middle of it was a tall blonde man wearing a red cape holding bright blue cube.

“Thor,” Loki said warily. “Why are you here?”

“Greetings, Loki,” the man said. “Where’s Stark? He requested another chance to study the Tesseract.”

“ When? Just now?”

Thor frowned in confusion. “I’m not sure,” he said after a moment. “Some time ago, perhaps? I was attending other matters and remembered it out of nowhere, so I wanted to bring it before I forgot again.”

Bucky and Loki shared a glance. “Could Tony have done that?” Bucky asked. “With that stone?”

“Yes.” When Thor moved towards the door to go inside, Loki stepped to block his way. “Thor, I know you believe you have little reason to trust me,” he said, “but you _cannot_ give Stark the Tesseract.”

Thor’s steps slowed, and he glanced from Loki to Bucky as if expecting a trick. “Why not?”

Just then, Tony appeared over the edge of the roof, his repulsors a bright blaze in the night. “Thor,” he said pleasantly, voice still flat and full of static and strangely echoing. “Old friend. Thank you for bringing the Tesseract.”

Loki put a hand on Thor’s arm as Tony landed on the roof. “Thor, Stark is lost inside the mind stone, and if we are to have any hope of bringing him back, you must give the Tesseract to me.”

In front of them, Tony stood with his hand out. “The Tesseract, if you please,” he said, taking a step closer. “Don’t listen to his tricks.”

“Thor, look at me,” Loki said urgently and Thor turned to him. “I swear by our mother,” he said, holding Thor’s gaze, “this is no trick. Please. Give me the space stone.”

“If I am wrong about this,” Thor said gravely as he handed the blue cube to Loki, after a long moment of hesitation, “nothing will save you from spending the rest of your life in Asgard’s dungeons.”

“Very well,” Tony said, rising to the air. “I will take it if I must.” Thor staggered backwards as two repulsor beams hit him in the chest and Bucky and Loki leapt to the side as the spot where they had been standing exploded in flames. Tony dodged Thor’s hammer on the first throw, but it hit him in the shoulder as it returned to Thor’s hand and almost knocked him out of the sky. He flew at Thor and tackled him, dragging him across the roof and almost over the edge before Thor threw him off.

Coming to his feet, Thor snarled and raised his hammer towards the sky.

“No, stop!” Bucky and Loki both shouted, but it was too late; Thor had summoned his lightning and sent it barreling through the air towards Tony, who made no effort to dodge the blast. When the echo of the thunder faded, they could all hear laughter coming from the suit; tiny lines of electricity were crawling over it and the arc reactor at the center of its chest was blindingly bright.

_“Whoa, what just happened?” Tony said as his desktops flared, screens growing incandescent and the computer fans whirring loudly as the heat from the processors spiked._

_Yinsen leaned over his shoulder, his hand heavy on the back of Tony’s neck. “They see what you’re doing and they’re trying to help you,” he said, his soft voice confident and soothing. “They recognize your gifts and are proud of you.”_

_“Yeah?” Tony said, pleased. He’d been worried about what the rest of the team would think about him and his powers, but apparently everything was fine. They trusted him. “Okay then.” Flexing his fingers, he went back to work; the other stones were out there, almost within reach. He’d already located another one here on Earth, and he just needed a little more power to search the rest of the universe. He had taken control over the satellites dishes of SETI, but trying to find anything with the narrow bandwidth of the available technology on Earth was like searching a warehouse with a penlight. There were worlds with technology far beyond that of Earth, he’d seen them. Now he just needed to get there, and then he would have the power to change not just the world, but the entire universe._

“Thank you,” Tony said, still sounding amused, and raised his hand. As he made a fist, the yellow stone glowed brightly, like a tiny sun.

“Oh, shit,” Bucky blurted, and then he was thrown sideways as Loki tackled him; instead of landing on rough concrete, though, they were back on the grass of Central Park. They both scrambled to their feet, watching as the blaze that was Tony’s suit rose from the top of the tower like a star. “Now he’s got Steve _and_ Thor,” Bucky said, stomach sinking with fear and dismay.

“With that much power, Stark likely took over the minds of everyone within a league of the tower,” Loki said, brushing the grass off his clothes and picking up the cube from where he had dropped it. “Which means as soon as someone sees us, Stark will know where we are.”

“What are we going to do? How are we supposed to get close to him without him taking over our minds?”

“The plan hasn’t changed,” Loki said. He hefted the cube, keeping a wary eye on Tony. “But now we have this. Which means that the first part, separating Stark from his tower and this city, which are feeding his powers, became much easier.”

“Well, that’s good news and all, but what about, I don’t know, the small army between us and the tower, not to mention all of the Avengers?” Bucky started to pace. “Christ, you and I are trying to save the world from _Tony._ That is so wrong.”

“No, we are trying to save Stark from the mind stone,” Loki corrected. “Saving the world- the universe, really- is just a side effect.”

Despite everything, Bucky had to laugh at that. “Right. Okay, so what do we do next?”

“Well, we certainly aren’t going to be able to fight our way to him, so we need to get him to come to us. Fortunately,” he said, turning the Tesseract over in his hands, “we have something he wants.”

 

“He’s gotta know this is a trap,” Bucky said an hour later. He knew he should be watching for Tony, but his eyes kept straying to the rip in the air behind Loki, the blue-black fog that formed the border of the portal and the lights of the alien planet on the other side.

“I’m sure,” Loki said, eyes narrowed as he searched the sky for an Iron Man suit. “But I also think that the mind stone is too arrogant to see us as a real threat.”

“It’s probably not wrong,” Bucky muttered, wiping the palm of his flesh hand on his pants as he tried not to pace.

Loki shot him a glance, lips tight. “When he comes, it will happen fast. Be ready.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a lightning bolt struck the ground where he’d been standing, dispelling the illusion with a flash of green light. Bucky ducked behind a giant HVAC unit as Thor landed heavily, still swinging his hammer as he searched for Loki on the rooftop. A moment later,Tony dropped off Steve, who somehow managed to look intimidating even though he was still in his pajamas.

“Shit,” Bucky breathed, watching as Steve and Thor split up to start searching. The roof was a maze of HVAC units, electrical boxes, and construction scaffolding, but it was only a matter of time before they were discovered. Meanwhile, not-Tony was hovering above them, out of reach. “We’re fucked.”

Loki snapped his fingers in front of Bucky’s face, scowling at him. “This is no time to despair. You know what we have to do.” Bucky nodded, swallowing his fear, and reached for the cold, hard place that still lived in him. As the fear and worry slid away, Bucky climbed silently to his feet and moved to intercept his target.

Steve wasn’t bothering to hide as he searched the roof, shield at the ready; Bucky dropped down behind him and Steve spun around, throwing the shield at him. Bucky caught it in the air and drove it into the concrete. Lightning split the air behind him as Steve raised his fists and squared his shoulders, jaw set and eyes blank. _Hit him until he loses consciousness,_ Loki had advised.  With a harsh, resigned exhale, Bucky blocked Steve’s first swing, taking it to his metal shoulder and hitting him sharply in the jaw with his other hand. Steve’s head snapped back and Bucky pressed his advantage, punching him twice in the stomach and trying to get him in the temple with his elbow. Steve dodged and spun out of Bucky’s reach, then responded with a flurry of kicks that drove Bucky backwards; when he felt his back hit a metal beam, he crouched and hooked Steve’s ankle as he back kicked, sending him to the ground. Bucky scrambled to pin him down but a repulsor blast knocked him sideways, sending him rolling.

“I don’t know why you’re fighting this,” not-Tony said, sounding mildly aggravated as he flew closer. “You can’t win. Just give me the stone and everything will be forgiven.”

Bucky grunted as Steve drove a knee into his chest. He blocked the following jab and the roundhouse punch, then when, like clockwork, Steve went for another kick Bucky grabbed his ankle and punched him hard in the knee. Steve fell, and this time Bucky was able to get a perfectly placed punch to the temple before Tony drove him backwards. As Steve crumpled, Bucky yanked his shield out of the concrete and ran towards the edge of the roof, dodging Tony’s rockets the entire time. “Now, Loki!”

“I’m sorry, Thor,” Loki said, and Bucky looked over just in time to see Loki drive a pair of daggers into Thor’s stomach, pinning him to the concrete wall. It wouldn’t hold him for long; he had already pulled one of the daggers out, apparently unconcerned with the blood streaming down his side, but Loki had bought them a couple of seconds and that’s all they needed. Bucky was already sprinting towards not-Tony, slinging the shield at him to keep him distracted as Loki caught up to him.

Together, Bucky and Loki leapt on not-Tony and the blue-black fog of the real portal crawled over them, feeling strangely hot and cold and wet all at once, and then they all hit the ground on the other side of the portal with a bone jarring thump. Bucky rolled to the side as not-Tony struggled to his feet, his power noticeably dimmer here in this sunny, windswept field instead of in the heart of New York City.

_“Whoa, now what’s happening?” Tony’s computers were starting to flicker and turn themselves off. His link to the world had been severed; instead of the billions of lights burning in his mind, now there were none._

_“You’ve been betrayed,” Yinsen said, looking furious._

_“What? By who?” Tony started to get up but Yinsen pushed him back down in his chair._

_“I’ll handle this.”_

_“I don’t understand-”_

“I’m sorry, Stark,” Loki said, and when Tony turned Loki punched him in the temple. He staggered and fell down to one knee, so Loki punched him again and again until he stayed down, then started ripping off the armor piece by piece. The gauntlet with the mind stone, however, refused to budge; the nanotechnology that Tony had been so proud of seemed to have fused itself into his skin. Tony, if he were in his right mind, could get it off, but short of cutting off his hand Bucky and Loki were at a loss.

“So where are we?” Bucky sat down heavily next to Tony’s unconscious body.

“Vanaheim,” Loki said tersely, stooping to put a hand on Tony’s head. “It’s still in there,” Loki said after a moment, sitting back on his heels. “The mind stone.”

“Dammit.” Bucky blew out a shaky breath. “Okay. What do we do?”

“We’re going to have to do for him what he did for you.” He met Bucky’s eyes. “We’re going to have to go in after him.”


	11. Rise Up

“Okay,” Bucky blew out a breath and ran his hands through his hair. “Okay,” he said again. “What do we do?”

“Get comfortable,” Loki said. “Take my hand, and no matter what you see, remember, this is to  _ save Stark. _ ”

“Right, but what-”

_ At first, there was a cave. The floor was sandy and electrical lights had been crudely strung up on the walls; on one side there was a dim suggestion of tables and cots and a pot-bellied stove, but what took up most of the space was a bank of computers, exactly like the ones in Tony’s lab. Tony was sitting in front of them, wires and cables running out of his arms and legs and into the computers, connecting him and tying him down all at once. Over him stood a thin, balding man with wire-rimmed glasses, fastidiously dressed.  _

_ “Tony!” Bucky shouted, and went to rush to his side, but the man stepped between them and it was like he hit a wall.  _

_ “Leave him,” Loki said, stepping up to stand beside Bucky. “Or we will force you out.” _

_ “You,” the man said, voice dripping with disdain. As he stalked closer to Loki, the man’s edges began to blur, his edges stretching and shifting until he solidified into a giant with purple skin and battered gold armor, towering over Loki. His lip curled. “You think you can fight me now, when you failed so spectacularly before?” _

_ Loki’s face paled and he took a step back. Behind him, Bucky could see the walls of the cave melt away, thinning until there was only a rocky, uneven floor and a field of endless stars in the distance. He hesitated, wanting to help, but he remembered Loki’s warning, so instead he took advantage of the mind stone’s distraction to go to Tony. _

_ “Tony,” he said softly, putting his hand on Tony’s shoulder and shaking him gently. “Come on, come back to us Tony, we need you.” He glanced over his shoulder at Loki; the giant had Loki by the wrist and was forcing him to his knees. Praying that Loki could hold out, Bucky turned back to Tony and started pulling out the cables that were connecting him to the computers, getting increasingly hopeful as they disappeared as soon as they were unplugged. “Please, Tony,” he said, his sense of urgency increasing as he heard Loki cry out behind him. Tony seemed to be waking up, still dazed but increasingly clear-eyed as the cables vanished. _

_ “Bucky?” he said in confusion when Bucky was almost done. “What are you doing here?” _

_ “Tony, listen to me,” Bucky said, taking Tony’s face in his hands. “We need you to fight this, understand?” _

_ “Fight what?” Another cry from Loki drew Tony’s attention. “Loki!” he said with alarm, rushing to stand. The computers disappeared and the purple man stopped and turned. He had Loki by the throat and was holding him off the ground, ignoring Loki’s attempts to break his grip. “Let him go,” Tony said, hands curling into fists as electricity coiled around him, climbing up his arms.  _

_ Loki was tossed to the side as the sentience in the mind stone became the older man from before. Bucky helped Loki to his feet as the man turned to face Tony. “Stark,” he tsked, shaking his head. “I’m very disappointed in you. You had so much potential, but now...I saved you, gave my life for yours, and for what?” He gestured to Loki and Bucky. “For them?” _

_ “I-” Tony took a step back as the man came closer. “That’s not-” _

_ “The whole universe waiting to be saved, and you feel proud for saving two people.” The man curled his lip as he looked Tony and Bucky up and down. “And not very good people, at that.” Slowly, the man’s edges blurred and shifted until Jim Rhodes was standing there. “You tried, Tony,” Jim said sympathetically. Tony didn’t fight as Jim put an arm around his shoulders. “But I think we just need to face the fact that you’re not the hero type. You gave it your best shot, but it just wasn’t good enough.” _

_“Stop,” Bucky growled. “I know what you’re trying to do. D_ _ on’t listen to him, Tony, it's just trying to break you down so it can control you.” He tried to shove Jim’s hand off of Tony’s shoulder but it didn’t budge. “You’re smart and kind and selfless,” he said instead, trying to keep Tony’s eyes on him. “You  _ are _ a hero. You’re the best man I know,” he said, and when Tony’s eyes slid away he knew he’d said the wrong thing. Jim’s mouth curved in a sneer, victorious. He steered Tony back towards the computers, but Bucky stepped in front of them, blocking the way.  _

_ “Stark,” Loki said, coming up to stand beside Bucky. “Tony. You yourself are proof that saving one person can save the world. Don’t give your fears any more power than they already have by giving in to them.”  _

_ “What good friends, to tell you such kind lies,” the mind stone said. This time he was an older man with a white head of hair and a graying mustache. “The truth is, you’ll never be good enough. Better to let others carry on where you have failed, Tony. Let me finish what you started, and you can stop worrying.” The man’s hand came up to the back of Tony’s neck, fingers curling threateningly, and Bucky wondered if the stone could do it, if it could destroy Tony’s consciousness and take over his body and his powers.  _

_ “No, Tony, don’t give up. We need you.” Bucky held his hand out, willing Tony to take it. “You, the man. Not Tony the techno-god, or Iron Man, but Anthony Edward Stark. Who else would look at Loki and me and see people who need to be saved, not just people who need to be stopped?” _

_ Tony stared at him, blinking, and after a long, breathless moment, Bucky saw his spine straighten and his face grow determined. He knocked the old man’s hand way and Bucky exhaled in relief, sagging against Loki. “They're right," Tony said. "I may not be perfect, but my best is pretty goddamned good. You’re not the first to try to manipulate me, to use me for their own purposes.” The sparks returned to his hands and the old man’s eyes narrowed. “It’s time to get the fuck out of my head,” Tony growled, and there was a flare of painfully bright light - _

Bucky’s consciousness was thrown back into his body so hard that he rocked backwards, losing his grip on Tony. Across from him, Loki hissed in pain, pressing his fingers to his temples. “What happened? Did it work?” Bucky asked, hands hovering over Tony, who was still unconscious. He heard a clicking sound, and when he glanced down he saw that the gauntlet was retreating from Tony’s skin. Bucky stripped off his shirt and used it to pull the gauntlet from Tony’s hand, tossing it and the stone in it to the side. 

Loki was reaching for Tony, lips still tight with pain, when Tony opened his eyes with a sharp inhale. Bucky’s breath caught in his throat when Tony met his eyes; he exhaled with a rush when he saw Tony’s normal whiskey-brown eyes, not the crystalline blue of the mind stone. As he sat up and saw the pieces of his armor scattered around them, he visibly paled.  “Are you guys okay?” Tony asked as he sat up, scanning them for injuries. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No, Stark, we are fine,” Loki said with a tired smile. 

Tony frowned as if trying to remember something. “But Steve and Thor aren’t, are they?” He said, and Bucky’s heart broke as he watched Tony remember. Tony bent over and buried his face in his hands, his breaths coming fast and ragged. “I hurt them, and a lot of other people too, didn’t I?”

“It wasn’t you,” Loki said, touching Tony gently and pulling his hands away from his face. “They’ll understand that.”

“But I still did it,” Tony said, voice raw. He curled tighter in on himself.

Bucky and Loki shared a glance over Tony’s head. “Welcome to the club,” Bucky said, and pulled Tony into a hug, resting his chin on Tony’s head. 


	12. Epilogue

“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal,” Tony said with a scowl as Loki laid down his card on the stack. Tony drew four more cards from the stack and added them to his hand, then nodded to Bucky. “Your turn.”

“You know, I’m no expert in this game, but I think Loki might be cheating,” Bucky said as he frowned at his hand. He put down a red nine. “I didn’t think there were that many ‘Draw Fours’ in this deck.”

Tony picked up the box. “You’re right,” he said. “There’s only supposed to be four of them, and we’ve played at least six.” He shook his head at Loki. “Who cheats at Uno, seriously?”

“Counting cards is also cheating,” Loki pointed out as he put down a card. 

“That’s only in poker,” Tony started to argue but he saw Steve come off the elevator and head their way. He took his feet off the table and the front feet of his chair hit the ground with a thump. As Steve approached, he stared at his cards with a studiousness that the simple colors and numbers did not deserve. 

“Hey, Tony.” 

When Steve stopped next to his chair, Tony took a deep breath and set his cards down. Ever since the night Tony sat down with the team and explained everything about the mind stone and his powers and Afghanistan, things had been strained around the tower. “Hey, Cap. What’s up?” Tony answered politely, plastering a smile on his face and suppressing the urge to run away; Loki and Bucky were both staring at him, and he knew if he chickened out now he’d never hear the end of it.

Steve pulled his phone out of his pocket clearing his throat. “I was thinking about all the stuff you said about your, you know, uh...” He gestured vaguely with the phone. 

“Superpowers,” Tony supplied. 

“Yeah. This kind of happened on the last mission,” he said, handing Tony his phone. “And I thought maybe you could fix it?”

“What the hell, Steve?” Tony said. He held up the phone and squinted at Steve through the bullet hole in the middle of it. “Did you drop your shield and have to improvise?”

“No, there was a sniper that I didn’t know about, he shot it out of my hands when I was trying to call for backup.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes at Steve and said, “Oh,  _ really? _ ” but as they began to argue Tony tuned them out, pressing the destroyed phone between his palms and closing his eyes in concentration. Fixing the physical damage was easy; moving the plastic and glass and circuits back where they belonged was child’s play. After all, he’d designed this phone, he knew how it was supposed to be. Retrieving the data from the destroyed memory and scratched SIM card took a bit more work. 

“Alright, it’s fixed,” Tony said after a few minutes, interrupting the glaring contest Steve and Bucky were having. “I made it more impact resistant but it’s still not bulletproof, so don’t try to use it to stop any bad guys.” 

“Thanks, Tony,” Steve said as the phone started chiming as it powered on. “I had just finished figuring out all the settings and didn’t want to start over with a new phone.”

“Anytime,” Tony said. “Wait, no. I don’t mean that. Everybody better not run to me every time you can’t play nice with the electronics that I already give to you for free, you hear me? I’m not your personal Geek Squad.”

“Are you sure?” Steve said with an exaggerated look of confusion. He pulled something out of his pocket, a small oblong device with an odd green sheen and tiny flashing lights. “Because one of the people we were fighting dropped this, but if you aren’t interested-” Tony’s eyes widened and he held his hands out, making grabby motions. Steve laughed as he handed the strange little device over. “Let me know what you find out, and, you know, don’t try to take over the world or anything.” 

“That was  _ one time, _ ” Tony protested, trying not to smile as Steve grinned and sat down next to him. Tony leaned his chair back, balancing it on two legs and turning the device over in his hands thoughtfully as Steve studied the stack of cards on the table.

“What are you guys playing?” he asked. 

“Uno,” Loki and Bucky said at the same time, grinning like sharks. “Shall I deal you in?” Bucky said innocently.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also having this story fill two bingo squares, Square T2 (a picture of Tony Stark in Iron Man 1 wearing a gauntlet and a tank top) for the [Tony Stark Bingo](https://tonystarkbingo.tumblr.com/) and Square O5 "Found Family" for the 2019 Winteriron Bingo. ;D

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for 'Apotheosis' by dracusfyre](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19042888) by [Serinah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serinah/pseuds/Serinah)




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